
CopyrightN^ 



COPSSIGIOT DEPOSIT. 



HORACE TRAUBEL 
HIS LIFE AND WORK 



7 /e 






A^-^^ 



Horace Traubel 

HIS LIFE AND WORK 



BY 

DAVID KARSNER 

AUTHOR OF "debs; HIS AUTHORIZED LIFE AND LETTERS* 



Published by EGMONT ARENS, at the 
Washington Sgu^ff Book Shop, New York 

1919 






COPYRIGHT 1919, BY 
DAVID KASSNES. 



Of this book' one thousand copies 
have been printed of which this is 

No. ffO,-/ 



©CI.A559 479 



^. 



G5 



CONTENTS 

Chapter Page 

I. "I Go Where My Heart Goes'^ ... 13 

II. Two Beekman Place 21 

III "Laugh, For God's Sake, Laugh" . . 34 

IV. Early Days 40 

V. The Man In The Making .... 49 

VI. With Walt Whitman 59 

VII. An Experiment In Communism ... 78 

VIII. Comrade and Lover 84 

IX. The Writer 102 

X. Poet AND Prophet 117 

XI. Social Revolutionist 126 

XII. Internationalist 138 

XIII. Fll See It All From Somewhere . . 155 



FOREWORD 

IN presenting this statement of Horace Traubel's 
life and work, which is at once an appreciation and 
an interpretation of his endeavors, I have tried to 
accentuate the quaHties of the man whose significance 
to me, at least, was measured not by his literary 
achievement, but rather by the fierce, devoted and last- 
ing love he bore for his fellow men. That love, that 
social soul of his, that universality of his rare mind — 
they were the foundation stones of his life; and, 
blended, they formed the keystone of his monumental 
work. 

As his own introduction to this book implies, 
Traubel knew that I would write about him. He read 
the second draft of my manuscript which was com- 
pleted in September, 1916. The book at that time 
comprised what are now Chapters Four to Twelve, in- 
clusive. Early this year I resolved to bring my state- 
ment up to date, to include his later years, and to pub- 
lish the record while he lived. To that end I raised 
a cash subscription list with considerable assistance 
from those most directly and personally interested in 
Traubel. It is only by reason of such support indi- 
cated that I am now able to send my book forward. 
I was at work on the final draft of this book when the 
news came of Traubel's death. That fact necessitated 
slight revisions of tenses, and the first three chapters. 
Otherwise my statement is intact in letter and spirit as 
Traubel saw it. 

7 



8 HORACE TRAUBEL 

Well, dear Horace, here's the book at last*. We 
talked of it often together. You, yourself paid for 
five of these books for five children, and you said you 
would write your name in them. You said, too, you 
were proud of your friends when one day a bunch of 
orders came in. So am I proud of them. The formal, 
eminent, lettered world may ignore this book as it ig- 
nored you. But no matter. You, now away off there 
somewhere with Whitman, Bucke, Ingersoll, little Wal- 
lace, will understand that what sings in the heart 
cannot be formed into words. You will know now, 
as you knew the other day, that love, not words, is 
the thing. Love that understands is self-sufficient. 

DAVID KARSNER. 
September 28, 1919. 
New York City. 



INTRODUCTION 

I'VE been allowed to see this bit of genuinely good 
work of Karsner's. But is Traubel worth such 
serious attention? One of Karsner's best friends 
and a man who knows who's who in Hterature said to 
him one day : " Believe me, boy, he's not entitled to it : 
you're wasting your time." But Karsner kept stub- 
bornly on the job till he got it more or less satisfac- 
torily finished and seems to have some preposterous 
notion that he can secure a publisher for it some day. 
Traubel himself, while appreciating and reciprocating 
Karsner's devotion, has tried to dissuade Karsner. He 
said to Karsner : " Don't publish it now : wait five years 
or so." Karsner asked : " Why ?" Traubel replied : 
" For two reasons : first, it'll give you time to study 
out and solidify your statement: second, it'll give you 
a chance to change your mind." Why should Karsner 
commit himself to an enthusiasm he might in a few 
years regret? But he made light of all entreaty and 
continued. Who would publish a book about Traubel ? 
It would have to be a man who believed in him agaisst 
fate. Where is there such a man? Traubel has no 
market for his own books. Why should there be any 
market for a book about him? I've been informed 
lately that Karsner intends writing about Dreiser. 
Now, there's a man the world wants and enjoys being 
told about. Dreiser has a market. And a Dreiser 
biographer will find a market waiting for him. I know 
a lot about Traubel's personal historv. When he was 

9 



10 HORACE TRAUBEL 

a young fellow he was a hot advocate of Whitmanism 
and went for Walt's enemies baldheaded. Walt him- 
self many times cautioned Traubel to " hold his 
horses," as he used to say. That is, go slow. That is, 
not claim too much. But Traubel was impetuous in his 
fiery propaganda. Karsner is much as Traubel was in 
all that. But the circumstances are different. Traubel 
had a rich nut to crack. But Karsner has a shell with- 
out a kernel. Walt's after fame justified Traubel's 
passionate protest. But nothing has happened in 
Traubel's career to justify Karsner's choice. The first 
thought I had in reading Karsner's quite flowing and 
vivid narrative was that it was a shame, as his friend 
had warned him, to waste all that skill in a direction 
which was likely to foredoom it to oblivion. John 
Burroughs years ago wrote Traubel a frank letter in 
which he said: " That part of your work which does 
not make me laugh makes me mad." At the best 
Traubel's only known to a handful of people. And 
even with that handful of people he's only rated as 
Walt Whitman's errand boy. His own writing is 
either totally ignored or wholly despised. No maga- 
zine in America would print anything that he writes. 
Even the newspapers have no use for him. To the 
college he's uncouth. Just the other day he showed 
me a letter he'd got starting " you dear old fool," 
and ending " you're a loving old ass, of course, but an 
ass, nevertheless." Traubel gets me all tangled up and 
confused. I can't make anything out of him. I should 
be prejudiced in his favor. But he often provokes me 
to the profoundest contempt. So I can well under- 
stand why the critics never take him seriously. A 
lawyer said to Traubel: "You're all right, old man, 
for now and then, but your writing's damned rot!" 



INTRODUCTION U 

It argues well for Karsner's courage that in the face 
of such facts, and an interminable list like them, he 
still contends that his hook's not caught in some snag 
in the mud but that he has a genuine fish on his line. 
If Karsner had substituted some more plausible name 
for Traubel's throughout he would have found a pub- 
lisher for it without delay. How a man as cute as I 
know Karsner to be could have been betrayed into such 
an infatuation it beats me to explain. But then we 
know every man marries the woman none of his 
friends would have chosen for him. And every woman 
marries the man none of her other lovers would have 
chosen for her. When the man marries we say to 
him : " Believe me, boy, you're wasting your time." 
And when the girl marries we say to her : " Believe 
me, dear, you're wasting your time." Perhaps it's 
not so true that everything's a mistake to somebody 
else as that everything's different to somebody else. 
But we marry in spite of everybody's pity. And we 
choose our books in spite of everybody else's choice. 
And our pictures. And songs. And what we eat. 
And no matter what you can think of. We do as we 
please. And we please to do what we must. And so 
in the universal scramble everything gets a chance. 
Every lobster of a man. Every rotten egg. All the 
god-forsaken monstrosities in art. No man is left 
behind. No thing. There's an apologist somewhere 
for every derelict, no matter how feckless. It's by 
supposing such a saturnalia of idiocy in which the 
brainiest people participate with the crudest that we 
can, if not understand, at least excuse Karsner's de- 
lusion. Why, Karsner, in a series of chapters of un- 
doubted force and pungency, actually constructs a sort 
of Traubel myth, in which we discover to our surprise 



12 HORACE TRAUBEL 

that the man we've always only tolerated as a- fair to 
middling ordinary companion in the commonplaces of 
life is after all gifted with uncommon spiritual graces. 
It's a theory too outrageous to be considered, con- 
structed and propounded with gravity and logic. I 
concede the importance of the significant exceptional 
individuals the world over who accept Traubel if not 
at Karsncr's valuation at least as voicing a forceful 
democratic seership and international vision of frater- 
nity. And I also consider that Traubel has a loving 
heart whatever mistakes or exaggerations or wilful- 
nesses his head is guilty of. But even with such quali- 
fications allowed for, this problem still remains open, 
and I'm not the man to settle it. He's shown me some 
of the extraordinary letters he gets from day to day 
exhibiting this side of his case. But he always does 
so with the air of a man unconvinced if not uncon- 
cerned. He frankly says he's a much greater tangle 
to himself than he would be to anyone else, enemy or 
friend. I feel finally like saying of Karsner's book 
what Burroughs said of Traubel: "That part of it 
which does not make me laugh makes me mad." 
Though I dont really allow that any of it makes me 
mad. But it certainly makes me laugh. 

June, 1918. 

HORACE TRAUBEL. 



CHAPTER I 



HORACE TRAUBEL lived one of the fullest and 
freest lives it is possible for a man to live on 
this earth. Like a giant tree, he rooted himself 
m hardened soil and was braced to weather any storm 
that might attack him. The fiercer the winds of ad- 
versity assailed him the more determined he became 
to stand his ground and challenge the elements that 
would subdue him. There were times in his life when 
it seemed as if he would indeed be conquered by the 
winds of fate and chance, but when the fury had sub- 
sided he was still on deck, compass in hand, steering 
his craft over treacherous shoals, and smiling like a 
radiant boy unconscious of the perils through which 
he had traveled, feeling a supreme satisfaction over 
the adventure. 

No matter how dark the clouds that hovered over 
and around him, Traubel knew that shadow was but 
the reverse of shine, that night was only another name 
for the same condition that produced day, and that 
dark but suggested the coming light. He knew that 
the door that shut him out kept others in, that the 
lock that barred him was equally forbidding to those 
behind it. None realized more clearly than he that in 
every sorrow there was an element of joy, however 
slight and obscure; that in every full and satisfying 
cup there were dregs, however bitter. ' 

13 



14 HORACE TRAUBEL 

Traubel was more than a poet ; more than an editor ; 
more than a literary critic, the Hke of whom America 
has never known ; infinitely more than the interpreter 
of his friend and fellow, Walt Whitman. He was 
the spirit of elemental love. He was the harbinger 
and the herald of justice and equality between man 
and man, nation and nation, ultimately pleading for 
the universal spirit in the individual and the inter- 
national qualities of the state. 

Supremely individualistic in manner, matter and 
method, he had a care and a concern for the fortunes 
of others that was beautiful to behold. He insisted 
upon living his own life at all hazards and costs ; think- 
ing, speaking and writing his own thoughts no matter 
what the penalty. In a sense he was ruthless in his in- 
dividualism. But none suffered remorse keener than he 
when he felt he had caused pain to come to another. 
He was by turns arrogant and humble. He was both 
assertive and reticent. He was at once a seething 
sea, rolling, restless, crashing and crumbling — and a 
placid stream shimmering in summer's sun and sing- 
ing as it rolls along in shadowed lane or flowered field. 
He was a fond friend to those who shared his life and 
his ideals, and a fierce foe to those who opposed the 
social principles and precepts of life upon which he 
had based his being. He was a hail fellow well met 
by any person, yet Traubel selected his friends with 
great care. The association of people was as necessary 
to him as the food he ate. He could not endure lone- 
liness. That is why he loved the cities and shunned 
the country. Turmoil, noise, booming trains, whistles 
of boats, loud voices in heated argument, fierce debates, 
conflict and contest of ideas and emotions, factory 



"I GO WHERE MY HEART GOES" 15 

whistles, the shuffle of feet on pavements, the shrill 
cries of newsboys, symphony concerts and the applause, 
baseball and the shouting " fans " — these were the 
things Traubel loved and in which he moved and had 
his being. The rich red color of life appealed to him, 
captured his heart and lured him on and on, up the 
cliffs and down the vales. He was caught in the 
whirling currents of life and thoroughly enjoyed the 
thrill of chance and adventure. 

Though he was a poet, the story-book lives of the 
poets did not apply to him. No moon mush nor star 
gazing found their way into his verses. But there was 
life in them, rich and red, vibrant and vital, inspired 
and inspiring. He might have written with a trip- 
hammer instead of a pen, for his poems and prose 
plumb the very depths of all there is of Hfe, and 
nothing was too sacred for him to attack, nothing too 
rough for him to condone if it had the elements of 
justice and love in it. His was the loving heart, his 
the universal mind, his the social soul. " 1 go where 
my heart goes," he once wrote, and his heart led him 
into all the highways and byways of life. He saw it 
all. He missed nothing. 

Traubel was most methodical in his habits of living 
and working, yet he was indeed prodigal and im- 
prudent. I have often heard him say that as boy and 
youth he took care of himself, never " bummed 
around," " bought books with spare money that other 
fellows used to spend on women," and lived regularly 
in the sense that he never wasted his substance nor 
drained his vitality in ways common to youths coming 
of age. Yet he robbed himself of necessary sleep, 
believing absolutely that four hours were sufficient for 



16 HORACE TRAUBEL 

him. He would work eighteen or twentx hours a day, 
with a little play in between, and sleep four or five at 
the most. In his later years, prior to his illness in 
1918, Traubel ate practically all of his meals in res- 
taurants. He worked so long and so hard and slept 
so little that his body seemed to demand much food, 
and Traubel often ate at irregular hours and such 
foods that would challenge even a cast-iron stomach. 
Having very little money at any time, he was obliged 
to first scan the column of prices on the menu cards 
before he looked to see what he wanted to eat. He 
invariably complained that he did not eat what he 
wanted, but what prices forced upon him. But what 
he missed in quality he made up in quantity. 

His writing and editing of his paper. The Conserva- 
tor, required all of his time and allowed no moments for 
exercise. He would travel the streets in New York, 
Boston, Philadelphia, wherever he happened to be with 
his friends, at all hours of the day and night, with no 
thought of inclement weather. He would not wear 
rubber overshoes, rarely carried an umbrella, and 
would not wear an overcoat on the coldest winter day. 
This way of living, coupled with the fact that in 1909 
he met with a severe accident on a Camden ferry boat 
going to his home from his office in Philadelphia, when 
a horse knocked him down and trampled upon him, 
crushing his ribs, gradually wore him down and re- 
duced his marvelous powers of resisting physical ills. 
His intense mental work tired him greatly, and even 
before his last illness, he would often sleep at his 
desk, in a theater, a moving picture show, or at a con- 
cert. He had burned the candle at both ends. 

The first real break came in 1914 when he was ill 



"I GO WHERE MY HEART GOES" 17 

almost to extremes. That sickness was his first, but 
it marked the beginning of the end of his Hf e. He was 
never the same man physically again. Rheumatic 
fever was the trouble at that time, and it left him with 
a valvular heart leakage. One could not say just how 
much damage was done to him by the five years of the 
World War, but it is my opinion that the emotional 
strain caused by the bloody conflict, and the fact that 
the hurricane of war swept some of his dearest friends 
into prison, while others of them renounced the ideals 
of their lives and became apologists for the war 
makers, was no small factor in shortening his days. 
Being hypersensitive and intensely emotional, such 
logical consequences of the world's insanity caused him 
terrific mental agony and wrenched his soul. The 
World War was the Colossal collapse of his dreams 
and even though he lived to see it " fought to a revolu- 
tion," as he prophesied it would be in 1914, and took 
great heart from the social revolution in Russia, the 
political revolution in Germany (the native land of his 
father), and the threatened social and economic up- 
heavals in other countries, the initial blow had been 
struck and it went straight to his heart. Since the 
latter part of 1917, Traubel was permanently ill, 
although he believed he would ultimately recover. In 
the summer of 1918 Traubel became very ill and in 
July he saw his old office in Philadelphia for the last 
time. He left it in charge of his faithful printer, 
James Hebron, a man older than himself by perhaps 
ten years, and who had set the type for The Con- 
servator for ten or twelve years. 

It was that summer when he had a hemorrhage 
which impaired his sight temporarily and which was 
accompanied by a shock that paralyzed his left leg 



18 HORACE TRAUBEL 

from the hip down. Even prior to this shockr Traubel 
limped a little in his left leg, but he ascribed the trouble 
to what he called ptomaine poisoning. It seems appar- 
ent that the seat of his trouble was really deeper than 
what he thought. As far back as June, 1917, Traubel 
had an acute heart attack which nearly took his life. 
It was the night before his daughter, Gertrude, was 
married in New York. Mrs. Traubel was in New 
York with her daughter assisting in preparations for 
the wedding. I had been with Traubel at his office 
all the evening. He was in normal spirits and seemed 
in good health. Shortly before two o'clock in the 
morning he locked his door and we rode down Market 
street to the Camden ferries. As was his custom, he 
stopped into a dairy lunch room. That night, I recall, 
he ate a large portion of baked beans, an order of 
wheat cakes, coffee and doughnuts. He was interested 
in the waiter, who was of German birth, and who had 
told him that two of his brothers had been killed in the 
war. As he ate he talked rapidly with the waiter about 
the war in general and seemed somewhat excited, but 
no more than usual, I thought, in discussing such a sub- 
ject. 

When we got to Camden Traubel saw that he had 
missed the last car home. He was greatly agitated. It 
was a calm June night and I was rather glad that we 
could walk, feeling that exercise would assist him to di- 
gest his food. When he reached 200 Elm street, his 
home, he excused himself and went at once to the bath- 
room on the second floor. I made a light in the dining 
room and read the morning paper. After a rather long 
while I became uneasy over his absence and went up- 
stairs. Horace was suffering agony for want of 
breath. Being thoroughly ignorant of the cause of his 



"I GO WHERE MY HEART GOES" 19 

trouble, I thought he had acute indigestion. His face 
was ghastly green, and every pore of his body exuded 
perspiration. His breathing was belabored and very 
loud. He would not allow me to call a doctor, and re- 
fused to tell me where I could summon one. My 
fright quite overwhelmed me, and in a feeble and awk- 
ward way I ministered first aid service. After three 
hours he went to bed, and I propped pillows behind 
his back as he said he could not sleep lying flat in the 
bed. At ten o'clock he was up as usual, somewhat pale 
and weak, but he went at his daily routine as though 
nothing had happened. That same afternoon we came 
to New York together and attended his daughter's 
wedding. I asked him if he had ever suffered such 
spells before, and he said he had had only one, and 
that a little while previous in Boston. It is apparent 
now that Traubel's spell with me alone in his house 
at Camden was one of the heart, superinduced and 
aggravated, perhaps, by what he had eaten. 

Traubel seemed to have had some queer notion that 
his body was immune from the ordinary ills. He paid 
very little attention to it. He overate and exacted 
from it the severest tasks. He thought nothing of 
racing up four flights of stairs a dozen or less times a 
day to his office. He made light of all warnings of 
health-care, and often ridiculed others who were more 
cautious than he. 

In the fall of 1918 Traubel, with his wife, Anne 
Montgomerie, accepted the invitation of William 
Leslie to visit him and his family at their home in 
Norwich, Connecticut. His physical condition became 
slowly and steadily worse. He suffered a severe 
attack of the heart while there, and upon one occasion 
ahuost died. But few of his many friends knew the 



20 HORACE TRAUBEL 

critical state of his illness. Each prostration left him 
weaker in body, but the virility of his mind was never 
impaired. He could not walk without the aid of a 
cane, and he dragged his left leg in a very slow man- 
ner. Naturally, this condition caused him to lose con- 
siderable weight, and his rotund and chubby figure was 
soon reduced to slenderness without the qualities of 
emaciation. 

In April, 1919, Traubel and his wife came to New 

^York. They rented one room in a rooming house on 

West Twentieth street, near Ninth Avenue, a block 

from the home of their daughter, Gertrude Traubel 

Aalholm, her husband and infant son, Malcolm. 

During the few weeks that Traubel was at the 
Twentieth street house he seemed to be getting along 
fairly well. He was extremely weak but suffered no 
pain. His appetite was always good, but his food was 
limited and his diet chosen with great care as his physi- 
cians were of the opinion that improper and too much 
food was a contributing cause of his illness. 

He was glad to get back to New York again, one of 
his old stamping grounds. At times he fancied that he 
could go around with his flock of friends as of old. 
But he soon realized that with him those hectic days 
were done. He was an old man now, feeble in body 
only, limping on a cane, virtually helpless in the physi- 
cal sense, and depending more and more upon the aid 
and comforts rendered to him by his wife and friends. 



CHAPTER II 

TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 

THE Traubels came to live at the Karsner home, 
Two Beekman Place, about the first of May. 
There were just three of us. Rose, of whom 
Horace was very fond; our daughter, Walta Whit- 
man Karsner, nearly five years old, whom he loved 
dearly, as he did all children, and myself; and only 
two of them, Horace and Anne Montgomerie. We 
occupied the parlor floor and basement of a four story 
brown stone apartment house facing the East River. 
Horace was given a table that fitted into one of the 
windows of the front room looking out upon the 
river. The room was fairly large, airy and sunny. 
There was no obstruction to the view of the river 
with its constant traffic and Brooklyn on the farther 
shore. We were in the heart of New York, yet re- 
moved from the city's clash and clang by reason of 
our somewhat remote location. We all hoped that 
here Horace would be able to rest and write as he 
willed. 

When he first entered the front room he remarked : 
" This is fine. If I can't get well here, Davy, there's 
no use trying anything." His and Anne's bed-room 
adjoined the front room. The first two or three weeks 
he did not seem to get any worse. Then came a severe 
heart attack. He dreaded even to think of these 
spells. Each one seemed to drain his ebbing strength 
and left him prostrate. Sometimes he felt a warning 

21 



22 HORACE TRAUBEL 

of these impending ordeals, and not infrequently they 
could be forestalled by strong medicines, digitalis, for 
instance, to promote circulation and heart action. Per- 
fect rest and quiet helped greatly in checking these 
encounters with what was imminent death. 

The first two or three weeks of his stay on Beekman 
Place Horace came down stairs to his meals. It was 
a painful effort for him to go up and down the steps, 
and the journey either way required much time. At 
first there were little automobile trips, arranged by 
kind and thoughtful friends, through the city streets 
and Central Park. The effort of getting ready for 
these outings became more and more exhausting, and 
they finally stopped altogether. His mornings sitting 
at his table by the window writing letters or doing 
other work connected with The Conservator became 
less frequent, and we were more accustomed to seeing 
him sitting in a large arm-chair, resting, with his head 
lying against his hand, or else lying on a couch by the 
bookcase, with three large pillows under his head, the 
lower shelves of the bookcase containing his daily let- 
ters held together by an elastic, and two or three glasses 
of water, one or two of which might have contained 
medicine. 

His sight became poor, and it was with difficulty 
that he read print even of the size of letter used in his 
paper. He had a large magnifying glass which he 
seldom used. He seemed not to care to use those 
articles which suggested infirmity. He would rather 
forego whatever comforts or pleasures that could be 
derived from their use. In the early stages of his last 
illness on Beekman Place he took a lively interest in 
the current affairs of the day, especially matters per- 
taining to foreign politics, the peace terms, which he 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 23 

severely condemned with their makers, strikes and 
impending social or industrial upheavals. Toward the 
end of his stay at our home his interest in these things 
seemed to wane. Sometimes he was too tired to be 
talked to about them. 

Visitors came frequently, and it was a rare after- 
noon when several people were not in the front room 
with him. Horace soon wearied of their company, 
and often he was glad when they were gone. 

His voice became husky and thick, and his enuncia- 
tion exceedingly poor. Even those of us who were 
with him daily often had difficulty in understanding 
his broken and half-whispered sentences. He would 
have the newspapers and the liberal magazines read to 
him, the reader always being careful not to read those 
items which might cause him excitement. Toward the 
end he had his letters read to him, and often he would 
request that they be read a second time. This was 
especially true when a letter from a near and dear 
friend had come. 

Although he could not come down stairs to eat with 
us, he disliked to eat alone, and twice we all had our 
evening dinner in the large front room upstairs. OnN 
these occasions we ate on the table which had been 
used by Eugene V. Debs in his prison room at Mounds- 
ville, West Virginia. Horace loved that table and had 
much sentiment about it. When visitors came he 
rarely failed to tell them the table had been used by 
Debs in prison. Both times that we gathered about it 
Horace proposed a toast to 'Gene, who had been his 
friend for many years. 

Almost every evening he would sit in the great arm- 
chair by the window and watch the boats pass. He 
loved the river and the lights. He could not see 



24 HORACE TRAUBEL 

the names on the boats and would ask us to tell him. 
He had gone up and down that river on many of those 
same boats to and from Boston, and he loved to think 
about those full and free days. Often he would pro- 
pose an ice-cream party among us, and he was always 
the first to insist that it was his treat. Trifles like 
that meant much to him. He would often give Walta 
small change for ice-cream cones or lolly-pops, and he 
never forgot his promise to her for a treat of this kind 
once he had made it. 

As the day approached for the Walt Whitman Cen- 
tenary, May 31, 1919j Traubel took a lively interest in 
the plans and preparations. He was determined to 
go to the Hotel Brevoort, Fifth Avenue and Eighth 
Street, where a meeting was held in the afternoon, and 
the . annual Whitman dinner at night. There was a 
joyful pathos in the appearance of Traubel at this 
affair. Of course he knew nearly all of those who 
came, and many who saw him must have felt that 
Traubel could scarcely live much longer. He was in 
gay spirits, and in his enfeebled way took part in the 
festivities. 

At the dinner in the evening, however, he was 
supremely triumphant. There were more than 200 
people in the double dining room, and it was hot and 
close. Traubel sat at a table near the door so he could 
retire easily if he should feel any ill effects from the 
gaiety. The informal speeches that followed the 
dinner had a distinctly revolutionary flavor and this 
pleased Horace greatly. It was not Whitman who 
was so much discussed as the peace terms, the Russian 
Revolution, the curtailing of American liberties, and 
the mention of the names of Eugene V. Debs and 
Emma Goldman, in the latter connection evoked 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 25 

applause from those who had come ostensibly to cele- 
brate *' The Good Grey Poet," Traubel's friend. 

Helen Keller was present on this occasion and the 
wonder woman, deaf and blind, and formerly dumb, 
met Traubel for the first time, although they had 
exchanged letters for several years. The diners looked 
on as Miss Keller placed her sensitive fingers on 
Horace's lips in order to understand his words for 
herself and without the aid of her teacher, Anna Sul- 
livan Macy. In the forum. Miss Keller was called 
upon to speak. These were her words : 

Dear Comrades and Fellow-Admirers of Walt 
Whitman: I came here to listen, not to speak. But, 
since the Chairman has called upon me, being a woman, 
I avail myself of this opportunity to talk. There are 
so many here paying eloquent tributes to Walt Whit- 
man, I want to say a word to the chiefest of his 
lovers, Horace Traubel. 

To stand up here and talk about Horace Traubel is 
like proclaiming the charms and the desirability of 
one's sweetheart from the housetops. The truth is, I 
love Horace Traubel. To discuss him in this public 
fashion is, therefore, somewhat embarrassing, espe- 
cially as this is our first meeting. But since we are all 
" comrades and lovers ", you will let me tell of my 
admiration and affection for one whom we all love. 

There are two men in Horace Traubel. I suppose 
that is why we love him twice as well as we love other 
men. He is a mystic, and he is a realist. His heart 
is full of dreams and ardent sentiments, and yet he is 
a most profound observer of men and their actions. 
He has thought out a scheme of life for himself. His 
interpretation of the world we live in, while deeply 
poetical, is very practical and human. He loves the 



26 HORACE TRAUBEL 

just and the unjust, the wicked and the good, the rich 
and the poor, because of the inclusiveness of his nature. 
These antitheses are revealed in his writings. He is 
angry with evil; he hates injustice and wickedness. 
But he holds out his kind hand to sinners and draws 
them to him with cords of human love. There is but 
one thing he asks of men and women — that they shall 
love one another. His kindness and magnanimity are 
inexhaustible. Indeed, there is something of the 
Savior about his interest in human beings, and his 
sympathy with their struggles. To him neither the 
individual nor the crowd is vile. He finds in each 
man and in the mass beautiful, common, elemental 
qualities of humanity. It is upon these qualities that 
Horace Traubel rests his hopes for the future. For 
him love, valor, self-sacrifice and the free spirit exist, 
and they are the only vital facts of life. They consti- 
tute the important and essential part of his scheme of 
a better world. Yet he penetrates far into the struc- 
ture of our social order, and comprehends what is 
wrong with it. It is here that the mystic and the 
realist clasp hands. He is the great Optimist, and his 
work is wholesome and encouraging. His dream is 
persuasive and inspiring. That is why we love Horace 
Traubel. 

The dramatic climax of the evening came, however, 
when one of the speakers proposed that everyone stand 
up for a few moments in honor of Horace Traubel. 
As we were standing, Traubel struggled to his feet, 
overwhelmed by the tribute and manifestation of love 
and regard. Some of the older Whitmanites were 
quite surprised at this incident, but the younger ele- 
ment, nearly all of whom were Traubel's friends or 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 27 

devotees, took it as a tribute due, perhaps too long 
deferred. 

Traubel issued the last two numbers of The Con- 
servator from our home, the May and June numbers. 
Just before his parting, on August 1, he was prepar- 
ing for the next number which would have been a com- 
bination of the July, August, September and October 
issues. On the front page of the last issue, June, 
appears this notice: 

" Owing to my serious physical disabilities, and the 
necessity of stopping work altogether for a couple of 
months, I have applied to the Post Office authorities 
at Washington, through the Postmaster at Philadel- 
phia, for the privilege of combining the July, August, 
September and October numbers of The Conservator 
this year. At the date of publication of the current 
issue I have not received a decision. It is needless to 
say that all subscribers will receive twelve numbers of 
the paper in full return for their annual payments. 

" Horace Traubel." 

There were several matters of a literary nature that 
held Traubel's interest even up to the moment of his 
death. He was arranging with his publisher, B. W. 
Huebsch, for a second edition of his poems, Optimos. 
With the assistance of Frederick P. Hier, he was 
willing that his prose volume, Chants Communal, 
should be re-published by BonI and Liverlght in their 
Modern Library classics. Traubel wrote an introduc- 
tion for this new edition of Chants at Two Beekman 
Place, for which he was paid one hundred dollars. 
When the moment came for the actual production of 
the Modern Library edition it was found that the 
plates of the book, which Traubel owned, had been 



28 HORACE TRAUBEL 

destroyed by a printer who issued the second edition 
of the book in paper covers in 1914 under the imprint 
of Albert and Charles Boni. The fact of this loss was 
kept from him, and he never knew of it. He had 
practically completed a book of labor quotations and 
references of Robert G. Ingersoll, his friend. Traubel 
was to write the introduction and a publisher had 
agreed to bring the book out. Always a prolific 
writer, Traubel published most of his work in The 
Conservator, and gave a good portion of it, without 
remuneration, to publications of the radical and liberal 
variety. One of his books little known is entitled, 
" The Dollar and the Man ". This book contains 
many of the best cartoons of Homer Davenport, for 
which Traubel wrote the texts, and a rather lengthy 
introduction. 

Traubel wrote his last long poem in the front room 
of Two Beekman Place. He wrote it in a half-sitting 
posture, with a heavy sheet of card-board as a sup- 
port for his paper. He had to take frequent rests as 
he wrote, and he was glad when he had completed the 
poem. It was entitled, " Walt, at Bon Echo, August, 
Nineteen Hundred Nineteen." This poem was written 
as though Traubel were already at Bon Echo, Ontario, 
for which place he left on August 1, arriving on 
August 3, having spent two days at Montreal en route 
to break the trip. This last unpublished poem was 
written for a celebration at Bon Echo in memory of 
Whitman. 

Extracts from the poem follow : 

I say, Walt, dear Walt: 

Ain't it funny, considering the light way they used to dismiss 
you, how they have to eat their words? 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 29 

They were always so sure you'd come to nothing — that their 
universities and editorial chairs comprised all heaven and 
earth ; 

How they passed you by without a word or with contemptu- 
ous words or foul epithets: 

We've come upon a milder period, Walt: this year they're 
saying kind things of you in choruses : 

And those of us who were with you when you were out- 
lawed are almost fashionable, so great is the demand 
for us : 

I was going to say I dont know what to make of it all, but 
that wouldn't be quite true: 

For I do know what to make of it : it's a story we're all 
familiar with : it's as old as anything new : 

So here, today, with these friends, I stand with my hat off, 
acknowledging the ancient lesson: 

Dear Walt, it takes me closer to you than ever : I understand 
better than ever the meaning of my birth in the world 
spirit. 

Walt, I could go on all day in this style : I'm so convinced by 

these people here and' by you : but I wont : 
I just feel like as if I was having another chat with you 

as you sit in the big chair and with me on the bed 

opposite : 
Oh ! those blessed old times, Walt ! they're sacreder to me 

than the scriptures of races : 
They're the scriptures of our two personal souls made one 

in a single supreme vision : 
That's all for this moment, Walt ; but it's the whole world of 

appearance and illumination, for all that. 

One evening as we sat alone in the front room, 
Traubel in the big arm-chair by the window, and me 
on the foot-stool by his side, he said, " Dave, no one, 
not a soul, not even Anne, knows what a teriffic 
struggle I have had to put up all my life to be what 
little I am. Oh God ! sometimes it's been awful. The 
tide always, somehow, seemed to go the other way, 



30 HORACE TRAUBEL 

and I trying to be myself was often stranded in mid- 
stream. It was the utter loneliness of the struggle that 
made it hard. Let a man try to be himself ! Let him 
try to follow the light of his own soul ! What does he 
come to at the end? A God damned fool! Look at 
Debs in prison! The world says he's a God damned 
fool. Look at Wilson and Lloyd George ! The world 
says they're God damned wise men. But who will the 
re-made world remember and revere? The God 
damned fools like 'Gene who do the worth-while things 
that become immortal or the God damned wise men 
like Wilson and Lloyd George who do the popular 
things that bring them contemporary notoriety? To 
be anything at all a man's got to be an ass in the 
popular esteem. I've always been for the asses of 
the human race. You'll see. Wait till I'm gone. If 
I'm talked about at all it will be with a shrug of the 
shoulder, or a solemn shake of the head : * What an 
ass he was, braying about brotherhood and all that 
kind of bunk. What a God damned fool he was not to 
know this is a practical world. And just look at the 
rag-tag, bob-tail crowd he traveled with! Wasn't it 
a pity ! ' You'll hear it all. I've heard a lot of it for 
thirty years." 

A little while later he said : "As you've got to write 
another chapter to your book, bringing it up to date, 
making it an inclusive statement, I want you to put 
down on record how much William F. Gable and 
Frank Bain have done for me. I waiit a full adcnowl- 
edgement made. I could never have continued The 
Conservator if these men had not helped me gener- 
ously. The damned thing would have gone under long 
ago. Gable and Bain exhibited a rare faith In us, 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 31 

They bridged every chasm. These two men, more than 
anybody else, justified me and my work. They be- 
lieved in the thing against every odd and every defeat. 
They have put up the money year after year, and 
they put up their love day after day, when I was 
fighting with my back to the wall. Make your state- 
ment plain and unequivocal, for that's how I mean it. 
Without the assistance of William Gable and Frank 
Bain I could never have amounted to the even ever 
so little that some people think I have amounted to.'* 

At another time we were talking about the labor 
movement of the United States and the principal 
figures of it. He said : ** I would like you to put me 
on record in your book as saying that in my opinion 
the four greatest, biggest, truest, most lovable men 
that our labor movement has yet produced are Eugene 
V. Debs, William D. Haywood, Ben Hanford and 
Fred Long." 

Traubel had two distinct feelings concerning his ill- 
ness. One was that he was very tired of it all, tired 
of the terrific struggle that he had put up to live on 
the terms that he cared for life. He knew that with 
the best luck he could not go on much longer in his 
condition, and that even if he improved he would still 
be stricken with more or less permanent infirmities. 

In spite of this feeling, he permitted himself to hope 
strongly that he would recover. More than that, he 
allowed his physicians to fool him concerning the real 
and serious nature of his disease. He would become 
elated when visitors told him ** how well " he appeared 
and suggested with him some plan or plans for the 
future. He struggled to live when death had already 
laid its cold hand upon him. Several months before 



/ 



32 HORACE TRAUBEL 

he died there was a glassy stare in his large bltie eyes, 
and an ominous pallor in his cheek. His physicians 
knew the truth. Two of the four doctors who came 
to the house intermittently to attend him told me, after 
inquiry, that Horace could not possibly live through 
the summer. Whatever Mrs. Traubel's own convic- 
tions and opinions were concerning her husband's ill- 
ness, she did not once let down in spirit in her con- 
stant association with him. More than any other per- 
son, Mrs. Traubel kept alive in Horace the hope that 
he would ultimately recover, though she did tell him 
that it would be a long, hard job. 

Back of all this, Horace had premonitions of im- 
pending death. In the evening by the window he 
would sit for hours with Anne, Rose and myself; 
sometimes only one of us would sit with him. Any 
number of times when I happened to be alone with 
him in the evenings he would express his wish that it 
were all over. At such moments, and I found him in 
many of them, life had lost all romance, lustre and 
charm for him. He talked but little in those last days 
at our home. When he did speak it was frequently 
about Walt Whitman, Robert G. Ingersoll, or Richard 
Maurice Bucke, all dead. His dreams, he said, were 
filled with pictures of Walt, and his old friend and 
greater brother seemed to be calling him. Those were 
his thoughts in his last days. 

Traubel's last writings were principally about Whit- 
man. In the May number of The Conservator his 
poem was called, "As I Sit At Karsners' Front 
Window." Following is the first verse : 

As I sit at Karsners* front window, 

Dear Walt, with tlie ruffled East River passing below: 

And Brooklyn opposite, and the bridge at the north, 



TWO BEEKMAN PLACE 33 

And the interminable majestic boats going up and down 

stream — 
The tugs, lighters, barges, and the huge dignified steamers 

crowded with people — 
And over it all the shifting panorama of the ductile skies — 
I think myself back to my young days with you : 
I'm overwhelmed by memories of an unforgettable past: 
And nothing can persuade me from it: 
It fixes me to a moment of inexpugnable time: 
I seem to look beyond the life before me to the antecedent 

life of older years : 
And I contemplate it with a joy I cant express. 

He was reminiscent in his talks as well as in his 
writing. He told us stories of people whom he loved, 
some dead, others still living. At some other time, 
perhaps, farther removed from the immediate scenes 
of his waning life which are now omnipresent, sharp- 
edged and vivid, I may set down some of his final 
testimonials and affirmations of his faith, spoken 
to us in the quiet and hush of summer evenings, with 
the river flowing by a few feet away, with his warm, 
thin hand pressing ours, with his eyes dim and moist, 
beholding the beauties of life's farther shore, seeing 
clearly things with his dim eyes that our sharp vision 
could never define, knowing that upon his silent lips 
were words of love, wit and wisdom, the jest and the 
joke, and the soft chuckle. It is too soon to speak or 
to write of those long summer days and the longer 
nights here in the front room at Two Beekman Place. 
Some other time will do for that, and if that time 
should never come, some other person will do for that. 



CHAPTER III 

** LAUGH, FOR GOD's SAKE, LAUGH " 

THREE weeks before he left our home, Traubel 
was bent upon going to Bon Echo, Ontario, 
about twenty-five miles from Montreal, in a 
portion of the Canadian wilderness. Those who 
have been there say it is noted for its grandeur of 
rugged scenery. There is an Inn conducted by Flora 
MacDonald Dennison, who for many years has 
been a devotee of Whitman, and who publishes 
a little magazine at Bon Echo called " The Sunset." 
Mrs. Dennison had invited Horace and Anne up 
there. Mildred Bain and her two children, Betty 
and Paul, were spending their vacation there, and 
other intimate friends were expected. Horace knew 
that Frank Bain would go up from Havana to 
spend his vacation with his family, and nothing would 
do but he must go. There were days and days of plan- 
ning and talking about this trip. His old friends, the 
Bains,' were the biggest card that lured him. Mildred 
Bain was as devoted to him as Frank, and she is his 
first biographer, having written a series of intimate 
sketches and appreciations of him and his work and 
published in 1913 under the title of " Horace Traubel." 
There was no dissuading him from going to Bon 
Echo. He would go if he died on the way. The 
anticipation of the trip and the change, and the greater 
joy of being with the Bains in what he might have 
thought were his last days on this earth, cheered and 
buoyed him. Frank Bain arrived from Havana on 

34 



" LAUGH, FOR GOD*S SAKE, LAUGH " 35 

July 29. In the late afternoon of August 1 they started 
for Canada. That day Dr. William J. Robinson and 
Dr. B. S. Oppenheimer visited him for the last time. 
Doctor Robinson told Mrs. Traubel that Horace 
" would not die on the train. He will live to get to 
Bon Echo."" Traubel's other physician in New York 
was Philip Cook Thomas. 

At the Grand Central station there was a party of 
his friends to see them off. Horace was in a wheel 
chair, very weak, but gay, and, in a sense, sad. He 
had a slight heart attack on the train before they 
reached Montreal. Two days later he was at Bon 
Echo. On August 5, he wrote as follows to Rose: 

" Here safe. Tired. Hopeful. I'm yours in all 
real senses of the spirit. I hope I'll come back but not 
so helpless. Can be of more use to you. I recall the 
hours with you and Dave and the dear child as a 
furlough in paradise." 

On August 9, he wrote to me : 

** I'm better a dim shade but cant brag. I have a 
fine note from Theodore Debs. . . . Tired still. 
Damned tired. God damned tired. 

Eternally, Horace." 

A few days later he spoke of his '* terrible weak- 
ness," and that he could scarcely hold the pencil while 
he wrote, or see the paper on which he was writing. 

Then came this letter : 

" I still feel like the last rose of the last summer. 
Write me. Tell me how the work is going. The 
beauty of this place is past all words and every ex- 
travagance. No press agent could magnify it. No lie 
could tell the truth about it. I still feel all in, or out, 
which ever you choose. Weaker than hell but full of 



36 HORACE TRAUBEL 

the love of heaven. I think of you and Dave and 
Walta and the East River room and the bustle of 
New York with longing. 

With whole heart, 

Horace." 

Late in August he wrote us that he, with a party of 
friends had crossed the lake in three boats and dedi- 
cated the great Walt Whitman rock, named ** Old 
Walt" for its ruggedness, hugeness and grandeur. 
Then they came back and Horace turned the first spade 
of earth in breaking the ground for the Walt Whit- 
man library. He concluded the note with, *' Happy 
in spirits, but tired in body." 

In a note which he wrote to us both on August 23 
he said: "Yours is a job for the cradle, mine a job 
for the grave-digger." 

On August 26, he wrote : 

" I had a heart attack last night and suffered great 
agony for two hours. I feel weak today in conse- 
quence, but love you with unaltered faith no matter 
what the experience of the day may be." 

The last word from him to us was dated August 28 : 

" Bad days these for me and Anne's also under the 
weather. Heart's playing me tricks again. Bad days 
and worse nights. 

Love always, Tired. 

Horace." 

Traubel took a turn for the worse after the Bains 
left, which was during the last week of August. It 
became necessary for them to visit their friends and 
relatives in Canada before leaving the Dominion 
finally for Havana. Horace broke bad with their 



" LAUGH, FOR GOD'S SAKE, LAUGH " 37 

departure. It was apparent that life for him from 
then on hung by a slender thread. He became weaker 
and weaker. His power of speech was almost gone 
and his sight dimmed nearly to the point of blindness. 
His mind was strong, however, and his tireless brain 
continued to act, but it could no longer direct the ener- 
gies of his body. When he could still sit up and talk a 
little, Traubel conversed about Whitman. He would 
say that he heard Walt's voice calling him from beyond 
the great rock across the lake. 

On Saturday, September 6, Traubel had two cere- 
bral hemorrhages. Death was not far away now. 
Early Monday morning, with Anne, Mrs. Dennison, a 
woman nurse, and one or two others standing by his 
bedside, Traubel turned his face slightly toward them. 
A wan smile was playing around the corners of his 
mouth, and he whispered to those about him who were 
witnessing the final flight of his life, " laugh, for 
God's sake, laugh." He turned his head. Horace 
Traubel died at five o'clock. He was in his sixty-first 
year. 

Mrs. Traubel and Mrs. Dennison arrived in New 
York Tuesday evening with the remains. 

Arrangements were made to hold informal services 
at the " Community Church," Thirty-fourth street and 
Park avenue. New York, Thursday, September 11, at 
3.30 in the afternoon. Although Traubel never had 
any patience with the orthodox or institutional church, 
he was very fond of John Haynes Holmes, and his 
associate, Harvey Dee Brown, of the " Community 
Church," which was liberal Unitarian, the sect to which 
Traubel adhered in his boyhood and early manhood. 
It had been arranged that Brown should introduce Dr. 
Percival G. Wiksell, one of Horace's life-long friends. 



38 HORACE TRAUBEL 

who would then preside. There would be no services 
in the formal sense. It would be more in the nature 
of a " Hail and Farewell ". The hearse reached the 
church a few minutes before 3.30. Behind it rolled 
the limousine containing the pall-bearers chosen by- 
Mrs. Traubel. They were Leonard D. Abbott, Roger 
Lewis, Bernard Weinig, Frank W. Bain, Frederick P. 
Hier, Arthur C. Aalholm and David Karsner. Crowds 
of people were on the sidewalk by the church and it 
looked as though there would be a convention instead 
of a funeral. We soon learned the reason for the 
crowds. The church was afire. Blue rings of smoke 
were already coming from the roof. Hasty confer- 
ences were held, and in a few minutes the hearse 
rolled out from among the clanging engines and bust- 
ling firemen with their hose and axes, to the People's 
House, a Socialist community institution, at 7 East 
Fifteenth street. Many followed on street cars. Fifth 
Avenue busses and subway trains. 

The coffin, covered with floral pieces, was carried 
into the auditorium on the main floor. At the last, 
Horace was among his people, in the vibrant atmos- 
phere of learning and revolt. Many of us regretted 
that Horace himself could not enjoy the humor which 
we found in our failure to attest our faith in him in 
a church. 

Doctor Wiksell read several selections from Opti- 
mos, a poem to Traubel written for the occasion by his 
old friend, William Struthers, a prose tribute from 
Lillian Wetstein Mendelssohn and a telegram from 
Max I. Mydans. Other informal tributes were read 
or spoken iDy Frederick P. Hier, Roger Lewis, Edwin 
Markham, Thomas B. Harned, Flora MacDonald 



" LAUGH, FOR GOD'S SAKE, LAUGH " 39 

Dennison and David Karsner. Helen Ware gave a 
violin selection. 

Friday afternoon a small party went to Harleigh 
Cemetery in Camden, New Jersey. The coffin was 
placed in a receiving vault until a burial lot could be 
arranged for. At the tomb final words were said in 
the presence of Traubel's clay by Ralph Westcott, 
David Cummings, Eitaro Ishigaki ; a Camden member 
of the Socialist Party, and myself. A bunch of red 
roses were taken from the casket and distributed to all 
who had come, maybe fifty persons. On November 8, 
Traubel's remains were finally committed to the earth 
in Harleigh. 

Traubel left no will. He had often said that he 
wanted his Whitman collection to go to the Library of 
Congress. The large gold watch which Walt Whit- 
man had given to him in his will, he in turn requested 
that that be given to Malcolm Aalholm, his infant 
grand-son. All other personal matters and effects 
come into the possession of Anne Montgomerie 
Traubel. 



CHAPTER IV 

EARLY DAYS 

HORACE Traubel was born in Camden, New- 
Jersey, December 19th, 1858. He was the fifth 
of seven children. His mother was of Chris- 
tian, and his father of Jewish, origin. Traubel said 
he was a half-breed. Early in his life Maurice 
Traubel, Horace's father, developed pronounced 
initiative both in character and in thought. Born 
in Germany of religious parents, Maurice Traubel 
began thinking his own thoughts in the narrow 
circle of an orthodox home. He questioned at 
first silently, then openly, at last breaking all bonds 
and turning his back once for all on orthodoxy 
of any order, either in religion, art or literature. It 
was the Talmud, with its rigid and minute ordering of 
every detail of life, that precipitated a quarrel between 
Maurice Traubel and his religious father. The parent 
insisted that the boy should not only conduct his life 
and thought according to rules of the Talmud, but 
should also read the book for himself. On one such 
occasion Maurice snatched the book from his father's 
hands and threw it into the fire. The father, aghast 
at the sacrilege, declared the rebel was no longer his 
son and ordered him from home. Maurice Traubel 
went to another part of Germany and pursued his 
study of art. A few years later he came to America, 
landing in Philadelphia, a friendless and penniless im- 
migrant, in search of a job. This he secured in his 
trade as printer, engraver and lithographer. He mar- 

40 



EARLY DAYS 41 

ried Katherine Grunder of Philadelphia. Both parents 
had dropped their church affiliations before they 
reached mature years. 

Traubel furnishes us with a striking note of what his 
racial origin meant to him. On this point I will quote 
him in full : " I am a half Jew. My father came of 
Jewish, my mother of Christian, stock. I am a half- 
breed. Huxley says a half-breed is a man who inher- 
its the vices of both parents and the virtues of neither. 
That's a bad lookout for me. I have brothers and 
sisters. Long before I came along in the family roster 
my father had ceased to be a Jew and my mother had 
ceased to be a Christian. I was never taught either 
Jew or Christian. I was let alone. My father said: 
' You will find out yourself what you are.' People 
sometimes discover me. A man said to me the other 
day : ' By God ! I believe you're a Jew ! ' I said : 
* You're not the first one who discovered it.' A man 
said to me the other day : * By God ! I believe you're 
a Christian ! ' I said : ' You're not the first one who 
discovered it.' So I cant hide myself. I am unveiled 
again and again. They ask : 'Are you ashamed you're 
a Jew ? ' They ask : 'Are you ashamed you're a 
Christian ? ' I answer : * When I meet a mean Jew 
I wish I was all Christian. When I meet a mean 
Christian I wish I was all Jew.' But that seems too 
enigmatic. * What the hell are you anyway ? ' Then 
I have but one answer left : * I guess I'm neither all 
Christian nor all Jew. I guess I'm simply all human.' 
That's where I have to leave them and they have to 
leave me. I sat next a man in a restaurant. He got 
confidential. I dont know what started him. He 
thought he hated Jews. He said: 'Any Jew's hard 
enough to bear, but for a real stinker give me a half 



42 HORACE TRAUBEL 

Jew ! * I assented. ' Yes — that's so/ He bright- 
ened up. ' Do you feel the same way I do about it ? ' 
I said : ' Sure : I ought to know : I'm one of 'em 
myself ! ' He took his size at once. ' Put me down 
for a damn fool ', he said. I did. But that day made 
him wise. One of my dear friends goes off about the 
Jew. Often does in my presence. I then say : * Look 
out — I'm a Jew.' He shakes his head : * I dont 
mean your kind of a Jew.' I say : ' You dont mean 
my kind of a Jew when I'm present. But when I'm 
absent there's only one kind of a Jew to you.' So it 
goes. Something in me tells me I'm a Jew. Some- 
thing in me tells me I'm a Christian. Something tells 
me I'm both and neither. But the Jew in me makes 
me sensitive to some Jewish things. I finds flavors 
and glints in Zangwill's stories which set me trembling. 
Yet there are offices or observances which I do not 
understand. The feel of it all is in me. But the 
knowledge is not there. I was not raised a Jew. I 
dont go to churches or temples. Rarely risk it. I feel 
safer in my outside world. In the streets. With the 
mixed-up crowd. But I take Zangwill in. I guess 
nativity will tell. Something about the stories stirs 
my blood. It gets under my skin. I easily respond 
to it. Not objectively, perhaps. But atmospherically. 
The half Jew in me gives me a half look into Jewish 
history and life. Makes me half competent to appre- 
hend Jewish tragedy. Involves me profoundly in 
Jewish humor and Jewish prophecy. I have read 
these stories as if they were portrayals of my own 
experience. Nothing in them is foreign to me. My 
father's people never had much to do with him. They 
n-ever had anything to do with me. I do not even 
know where they are. Recently by accident I discov- 



EARLY DAYS 43 

ered one of my cousins. She has greatly endeared 
herself to me. But I might have gone on and on to 
the end and never known her. How then does it occur 
that I enter so mysteriously into the current of Jewish 
allegory and romance, into Jewish narrative and song ? 
I cant explain it. I know that it is. That's all. So 
that Zangwill's book is my book. His stories are my 
stories. Their refinements and their vulgarities are 
the tussle of my personal spirit. How strangely life 
weaves its patterns into vivid memories. How a man 
goes back to himself as well as forward to himself. 
The half Christian in me persecutes the half Jew in 
me. The half Christian in me put? the half Jew in me 
on the rack. The half Christian in me banishes the 
half Jew in me. The half Christian in me drives the 
half Jew in me from land to land, from age to age. 
The half Christian in me hates the half Jew in me 
living and dead. I feel the surge and sweep of this 
conflicting past. And then something else awakens in 
me. The half Christian in me gets acquainted with 
the half Jew in me. The half Christian in me sees 
that it misunderstood the half Jew in me. The half 
Christian in me is merged in the half Jew in me. Just 
as the half Jew in me considers and acknowledges the 
half Christian in me. Just as the half Jew in me finds 
that it loves the half Christian in me. Just as the half 
Christian in me finds that it loves the half Jew in me. 
The half Jew in me passing back and the half Christian 
passing forth across to each other by the same bridge 
in me. So that I am brave with Jesus when he goes 
to the cross. And I am afraid with Pilate who exe- 
cuted him. And I am bigoted and arrogant with 
Torquemada when he persecuted. And I am horrified 
though calm with the Jews whom he persecuted. The 



44 HORACE TRAUBEL 

two veins of being unite in me. I feel either and both. 
I read St. Thomas as if it belonged to me and I be- 
longed to it. And I can read Zangwill as if I belonged 
to him and he belonged to me. Those halves of two 
things in me make a whole of something. What am 
I ? The half Jew cant name me. The half Christian 
cant name me. What am I ?"* 

When Horace Traubel came into the world the 
United States w^as being divided by hostile opinion 
over the question of human slavery. The most 
furious revolution that had yet smothered any nation 
was being preached in the land. Although he had no 
recollection of it, his baby eyes saw soldiers march 
away to save the Union and destroy with fire and steel 
the Southern claim to barter and sell the Negro's flesh 
and spirit. 

Horace was a shy and puny youngster. " Neighbors 
often told my mother," he said, " that she would not 
raise me." Religious liberty came first in the educa- 
tion of the children. Several of them attended a 
Sunday school, and later, when the older ones seceded, 
and flouted the younger sister because she remained 
faithful, the father decisively said : " Let her alone 
children. She must work out things for herself. That 
is the only way for any of us. We must have free- 
dom." The wisdom of the father was manifested 
on another occasion when the group of boys were 
wrangling as to who should first read a desired book. 
*' No mine or thine in this house ! " the father declared. 
** From oldest to youngest, each in his turn. That is 
the way." This was the law of the Traubel home all 

- * Review of Israel Zangwill's " Ghetto Comedies," The Con- 
servator, October, 1911. 



EARLY DAYS 45 

through life. We find Horace spending all of his 
spare moments reading everything he could lay his 
hands on. His greatest companions were his books. 
Before he was out of his teens he had head Emerson, 
Spencer, Carlyle, Ruskin and Whitman. In spite of 
his wide range of reading Traubel always advised 
against what he called bookishness. Even in those 
early days he entertained no regard for books merely 
as books, but he revered them as moving and com- 
paritive records of life and thought. This learning 
was supplemented by his education acquired in his 
home in which artists, musicians, thinkers and workers 
of all orders came and went, each the expounder of 
some live question of the day. 

Maurice Traubel wanted Horace to become a por- 
trait painter, but it is worthy of note that children 
rarely become what their parents design them to be. 
Horace did a little crayon work. I have seen some 
specimens of his efforts in this line and they prove the 
boy's natural bent for brush work. He attended the 
public schools in Camden until he was twelve years old, 
caring for a newspaper route meanwhile. After leav- 
ing school he continued his newspaper route, worked as 
an errand boy and helped his father who, later, kept a 
stationery store. Horace Traubel, afterward served as 
a printer's devil in a Camden printery. Next we find 
him as a compositor in the plant of the Camden New 
Republic, edited by Harry Bonsall. This work was 
too staid and orthodox to long hold his attention, so he 
went over to the Camden Evening Visitor, where 
he set type, read proofs, wrote editorials and did most 
of the local reporting. It should be remembered that 
Traubel was taking a post-graduate course in the most 



46 HORACE TRAUBEL 

approved school of journalism which produced such 
renowned journalists as Benjamin Franklin, Horace 
Greeley, Charles Dana, and other notable figures in the 
early American newspaper field. 

The course pursued by Traubel in newspaper work 
is now almost obsolete and unobtainable in American 
cities where the daily production of newspapers de- 
pends almost entirely upon specialty workers from 
editorial writers to the boys who pull the proofs. But 
it is also a fact that today the managing editors,, 
editorial writers, news editors and other having to do 
with the directing end of big dailies are in most in- 
stances men who have had an all-round training in 
newspaper work such as Traubel acquired. 

In addition to this training, Traubel became an ac- 
complished lithographer and not infrequently he would 
detect flaws in half tones and colored prints. We find 
him in turn factory paymaster and bank clerk in Phila- 
delphia. Here we see Traubel the wage earner. It 
was his delight to tell how he worked for wages for 
thirty-four years. He had a working knowledge of the 
industrial and social evils which he attacked. His 
hatred of the past black slaver}^ in the South was no 
more intense than was his loathing of the present 
social inequalities. He saw clearly the injustices under 
which workmen toiled in the factory of which he was 
paymaster. Later on his eyes were opened to the 
chicanery of bankers, who glorify and grow fat on the 
economic evil of rent, interest and profit. He talked 
and wrote not from his theories only, but from per- 
sonal experience. He strove first to free himself from 
short pay and long hours that threatened to sap his 
vigor and warp his spirit. Bouck White says that 



EARLY DAYS 47 

Christ first revolted against the economic thraldom in 
which he found himself unable to make a decent liv- 
ing at his carpenter trade before he decided to lay 
aside his tools to preach the most revolutionary 
propaganda of all time. It was not until he was 
thrown into jail in 1895 for his activity in the Ameri- 
can Railway Union strike that Eugene V. Debs rea- 
lized how impossible it was to secure the industrial 
freedom of railroad workers, whose cause he cham- 
pioned, until the entire laboring classes of the United 
States had achieved their liberty from w^age slavery. 
That knowledge made Debs a Socialist. William 
Morris realized that to free art the artsman must 
also be free; that to accomplish good craftsmanship 
the craftsman must receive the full product of his 
labor. Hence, we find in William Morris, the artist 
and writer, William Morris, the Socialist and liberator. 
So, when it dawned upon Traubel that the freedom of 
the collectivity meant also the freedom of the indi- 
vidual, he discarded his anarchistic theories to free 
the workman, and adopted the Socialist philosophy 
that he might contribute his share towards the emanci- 
pation of the workers of the world. In freeing them 
freeing himself. 

There was only one period in Traubel's life when 
he regretted his lack of formal college training, and 
that was prior to his marriage. The incident is made 
note of in his second volume of **With Walt Whit- 
man In Camden," as follows : " I said to Whitman : 
* I used to regret that I missed going to college.' 

* You regret it no longer ? ' 

* I see now that I was in luck.' 

* Good for you. You were in luck. You made a 



48 HORACE TRAUBEL 

providential escape. For a fellow with your rebel 
independence, with your ability to take care of your- 
self, with your almost nasty resolution to go your 
own road, a college is not necessary — would, in fact 
be a monster mountain of obstruction. As between 
a university course anyhow, and a struggle of the right 
sort in the quick of every day life, the life course 
would be the best university course every time.' " 



CHAPTER V 

THE MAN IN THE MAKING 

THE eighties and nineties were full years for 
Traubel. He had lost himself in the world 
and found himself in man. His scattered 
ideas had taken root in the soil of coherent philoso- 
phy. Having learned the lesson of what was 
he began to write his message of what ought 
to be. In 1891 he married Anne Montgomerie, 
— a woman of broad vision and intellect. One 
cannot help but feel ennobled by her presence. 
Her name stood as associate editor of The Conservator 
until the last. Two children were born to them, 
Gertrude, now Mrs. Aalholm, and Wallace, who died 
at the age of five years. The daughter, who sprung 
from this fountain of intellect and love, is a talented 
musician. Although she never attended public school, 
at the age of twelve years she had read more and 
thought more than the average high school graduate. 
She has her own ideas on all subjects and frequently 
took issue with her father on some matter of uni- 
versal interest. When but a mere slip of a girl she 
staid awake one night until two o'clock until her father 
came home to get the news from Russia. 

" Did the Czar hear the people ? " she called to him 
from the top of the stairs. 

" No," answered her father, ** the soldiers shot them 
down." There was not another child in America that 
night more moved by the sorrows of a people far away. 

49 



50 HORACE TRAUBEL 

The family, when together, made their home in 
Camden, living at different times in Httle two stor}- 
brick houses, their latest domicile being at 200 Elm 
Street which is but a few minutes walk to the ferries 
to Philadelphia. 

During the nineties Traubel held a clerical position 
in the Farmers and Mechanics Bank, on lower Chest- 
nut Street, in Philadelphia, wrote for newspapers and 
magazines during his spare moments, and edited and 
managed The Conservator which he established in 
1890. Ofiicials of the bank learned that Traubel was 
the exponent of certain fundamental principles which 
they construed as hostile to the interests which they 
represented. 

" I never talked my ideas in the bank," Traubel said, 
** but when asked for my opinion I gave it frankly." 
He declared he knew he was a " marked man." There 
was not the remotest connection between his duties and 
his beliefs, hence it is quite easy to discern the dis- 
cordant note. 

In order to avoid possible criticism resulting from 
discharging Traubel because of his radical ideas, offi- 
cers of the bank resurrected an old rule and applied 
it to him ; it was that no employee of the bank was al- 
lowed to conduct an outside business. This referred 
to Traubel editing and publishing The Conservator. 
He was given the alternative of retaining his position 
by abandoning his literary work, or keeping the latter 
and losing his position. He chose to lose his position. 
There are many employers who not only demand the 
best of the employes' time and labor, for which they 
pay small and unfair wages, but who also strive to 



THE MAN IN THE MAKING 51 

confine the mental and spiritual range of their em- 
ployes to the interests of their own business. 

In 1902 we find Traubel a free agent, devoting him- 
self wholly to editing and publishing his own paper 
and doing his other literary work. Traubel's early 
writings were contributed chiefly to the Boston Com- 
monwealth, a literary weekly; the Boston Index, and 
the Chicago Unity, an organ of liberal Unitarianism. 
He was the founder of the Contemporary Club, of 
Philadelphia, and also helped to organize the Phila- 
delphia Ethical Society. In connection with the latter 
organization Traubel's rebel spirit manifested itself 
in an illuminating and picturesque degree. Among 
the members of the society were faddists, persons who 
enjoyed participation in the discussions as long as they 
were conducted in a restrained and harmless manner. 
Traubel's purpose was alien to them. He wanted good 
to come of the society. He cared nothing for parlor 
debates. He saw wrongs in the world and he strove 
to employ every vehicle of expression to right them. 
The conservatives would have none of it. They went 
into executive session and when they reappeared on 
the floor they tried to slip a muzzle over the young 
firebrand. Above the commotion that followed Trau- 
bel cried, ** Democracy is my star," and he quit the 
body forever. Traubel voiced the rebellion of other 
members, and with him, they left the organization and 
constructed the Society for Ethical Research. In this 
group were anarchists, theosophists, prohibitionists, 
single taxers, Adventlsts, Socialists and free-thinkers. 
Traubel presided over their meetings which were held 
in old Merchantile Hall, on Tenth street in Phila* 
delphia. 



52 HORACE TRAUBEL 

One day as he and I were passing the hall Traubel 
gripped my arm and exclaimed : " Many a time I used 
to come out here and sit on the curb when the majority 
appealed from my decisions. Then they would become 
so interlocked in argument that they would finally send 
out a committee to wait upon me on the curb and ask 
me to return to the chair.'* Anybody could walk in 
from the street and throw his hat in the ring of intel- 
lectual debate. The atheist vied with the theologian 
for the floor, while the anarchist and Socialist were 
hopelessly deadlocked in economic theorizing. This, 
and other similar experiences were not lost upon 
Traubel. They taught him lessons unobtainable in any 
school. He began to realize that the worst woes were 
not the material and spiritual poverty that abounded 
in the world, but rather an absence of cohesion among 
radicals to lift the heavy and unequal burdens from 
the backs and minds of men, women and children 
trapped in the human maelstrom. 

In the first issue of The Conservator, March, 1890, 
we discern the seed of his youthful zeal and intellectual 
vigor, which, after many years of fierce struggle, blos- 
somed into the fruit of his mature wisdom and spir- 
itual vision. In that first number under the caption, 
" Greeting ", he stated the initial purpose of the paper : 

" The Conservator originated in the conviction of a 
group of members of the Ethical Society that the 
different Liberal Societies of this section (as of all 
sections), ought to know more of the intimate social 
and spiritual life of each other than circumstances, if 
not unwise inclinations, now make possible. This 
knowledge, it was argued, would lead to a recognition 
of those things held in common — those ethical veri- 



THE MAN IN THE MAKING 53 

ties, those humanitarian impulses, which defer to none 
but universal ends. 

" It is not pretended that this idea, especially at the 
outset, can be perfectly embodied. Philadelphia has 
Unitarian, Hebrew and Ethical Societies, all working 
in similar lines. Heretofore those have been as strang- 
ers one to the other. The Conservator will aim to 
glimpse in each such cardinal utterances and occur- 
ences as will, brought together, ensure mutual benefits. 
The record of the daily life of these societies — for 
example, of studies pursued, charities furthered, 
whether by platform representatives or the laymanry — 
is sought for preservation. Moreover, we design to 
make this a means of brief communication between the 
ethical societies at large, which at present have no 
frequent channel of intercourse. 

" Our necessary immediate purpose is of course 
local. But it is determined that this word * local ' 
shall not narrow the scope of our work. However 
local the field, we shall keep the spirit to universal 
methods. Not less than Thoreau at Walden shall we 
spiritually realize all climes and seasons here at our 
doors. Chiefly, the intention is, to give a voice to the 
voiceless, and in a sense to give a united voice to 
Liberalism as variously spoken for in this community. 
Whatever the differences, the unities are many more. 

" The Conservator is not an organ. It keeps itself 
free to welcome all the broader tendencies and ethical 
growths, in orthodox life as in radical. It hopes in 
the course of its career to have much, indeed, to tell 
of what the orthodoxy of Philadelphia may be doing 
to enlarge the vision of man. Although the outcome 
of the labor of members of the Philadelphia Ethical 
Society, it is not the organ of that society, but, in the 



54 HORACE TRAUBEL 

dream of those controlling it, the broadest welcomer 
and chronicler of efforts, however partial, towards 
richer moral possessions. By right of our name we 
come into limitless ownerships. Experience alone can 
show if we justify our heritage." 

Thus The Conservator was launched. In those early 
years of its life it adhered to its original purpose. 
But later on cliques and cults began to sprout from 
the parent societies whose cause the paper championed. 
Different groups had different opinions and propa- 
ganda which they thought should be aired in The Con- 
servator. Favor to one clique meant courting offense 
from another group, and again intellectual discord was 
brought into play until Traubel threw down the gaunt- 
let to those who sought to control his pen, gathered 
his ideals together and planted them firmly in The 
Conservator, which he afterward published as his per- 
sonal vehicle of expression. 

Although the business end of the paper had at vari- 
ous times been conducted by other willing hands, 
Traubel not once, in the thirty years of The Conser- 
vator's life, surrendered the editorship even tempo- 
rarily. Although the January number sometimes 
appeared in April, and the June number in August, 
Traubel said, " It doesn't matter, for I'm so much 
ahead of the age that a few months makes no differ- 
ence." There is no person who could continue his 
editorial work. None would attempt it. The paper 
was mostly all Traubel and was built around and re- 
flected his personality. It reflected the optimism of 
his soul, mirrored the hopes of the oppressed, chal- 
lenged those who sat upon thrones, championed the 
toilers of the earth, and gave voice to the voiceless. 



THE MAN IN THE MAKING 55 

He did not moralize or sermonize. With him 
democracy was not a cloak. It was a faith. 

"All that I am and have/' he once said, " I got from 
the people. It all goes back to them." His poems and 
prose pieces were inspired somewhere, at sometime 
through his daily contact with people. They were not 
manufactured. They were human testimonies. He 
once told me of a talk he had with an Englishman who 
had been in the trenches in France at the outbreak of 
the European war. " We were within three feet of 
shaking hands," said the Englishman in telling how 
close the British were to the Germans. Traubel 
caught the fundamental significance of the English- 
man's phrase and wrote a 2,000 word * Collect ' in The 
Conservator on "We Were Within Three Feet of 
Shaking Hands ". He did not write to fill so many 
lines on so many pages. He wrote to throw so many 
sunbeams into so many hearts, and so many gems of 
thought into so many minds of men. Many of the 
daily incidents of life which others consider trite or of 
slight consequence contained a certain significance to 
Traubel. He observed the unobserved. We have 
ridden in open trolley cars on summer evenings, a 
decade ago, when he would suddenly direct my atten- 
tion to nocturnal pictures painted by the moon and 
stars on the canvas of night. We have seen him strug- 
gling to keep back burning tears as he passed a gaunt, 
starving figure of a man, and the next instant he would 
empty his pockets in the hands of the unfortunate and 
curse the social system that took no better care of its 
children. 

An idea in the mind is as much a revolution as a 
seed in the ground. People are not revolutionary until 
they think revolution. Platforms and resolutions 



56 HORACE TRAUBEL 

without purpose and action are as worthless as a loco- 
motive without steam and wheels. There is injustice 
in the world not because most people do not want 
justice, but because only the vigorous minorities battle 
for justice. There are jails and poor-houses in the 
world not because people would not rather have their 
brothers and sisters in hospitals and homes, but be- 
cause it appears to be more convenient to society to 
punish the erring and penalize the pauper than to 
remove the impulse of error and abolish the cause of 
poverty. 

Traubel rarely dealt in the abstract. His mind did 
not travel in circles. His chart of life contained 
straight lines to the earthly peace of which he dreamed, 
and in his course he answered apologetic negation with 
brutal affirmation. He never said no when he could 
say yes. Traubel had always been a communist. The 
Russian Bolsheviki revolution stirred him deeply. He 
could see but little good in a just political government 
or in a fair industrial society unless people were drawn 
to each other in happy accord. He expressed the be- 
lief of the Socialist when he said that a co-operative 
commonwealth would identify the individual. Yet a 
Socialist administration of political or industrial affairs 
would have been irksome and intolerable to him if its 
conduct obscured the identity or throttled the expres- 
sion of those whom it meant to serve. Traubel argued 
that the only remedy for this possibility was in the 
establishment of community, or co-operative, adminis- 
tration of such affairs as effect the welfare and needs 
of the people. He was a Socialist because he wanted 
society — the people — to govern. He was in thorough 
accord with the Soviet government of Russia. He was 
suspicious of arbitrary rulers in whatever form, and 



THE MAN IN THE MAKING 57 

had faith in the ability of the governed to govern 
themselves. Traubel went beyond the Socialist politi- 
cal orthodoxy. He could, nor would not, harness his 
philosophy of life to any one program or platform. 
Programs and platforms imply restraint. Traubel was 
a current that could not be restrained. Then why was 
he a Socialist ? Because he held that that organization 
was the only one which was democratically controlled 
and which was sincerely working through political 
channels to abolish industrial and economic inequal- 
ities. The orthodox, or Marxian Socialist adheres 
tenaciously to a material program and holds firmly to 
"the material conception of history." That was 
where Traubel broke away and went beyond. He re- 
fused to believe that everything we take an emotional 
joy in is illusion. He was a spiritualist who did not 
lose sight of the fact that material wrongs can be 
righted through material channels. I do not wish to 
convey the impression that all Socialists are fierce 
materialists. Many have quite contrary beliefs. But 
it appears to be patent that because of the fierce and 
sordid economic struggle for existence and the dis- 
covered treachery and hypocrisy of many religious 
creeds, millions of contestants in the battle for life are 
pinning their faith to material deliverance. 

Traubel contended for the larger aspects of the labor 
movement. If the struggle of the working class 
hinged entirely upon the bread and butter question it 
might not be so furiously combatted by those who hold 
the keys to the social storehouses. If the terrific battle 
of the worker resulted altogether from small wages 
and long hours his fight might possibly be made less 
intense by the ruling class. The industrial masters do 
not want to starve their workers for they quite clearly 



58 HORACE TRAUBEL 

realize that an empty stomach makes a man an ineffi- 
cient workman. The moderately fed are more indus- 
trially productive than the underfed. But the grant- 
ing of more wages and the lessening of the hours of 
labor presents an opportunity to the workman to read 
and to think and increases his social vision. That is 
more dangerous to the ruling class than increased 
wages. 

When the workman gets up off his knees he is as 
tall and as erect as his master. As the serf approaches 
the throne the crown of his king becomes less dazzling. 
An imitation diamond flashes most when you stand 
away from it, but if you examine it closely it loses 
much of its brilliance. The flash of the master's 
acquired power is blinding to the workman because he 
stands away from it. But if given a chance to enlarge 
his vision he will soon see that his master's power is 
ephemeral and deceptive. He will strive either to 
usurp his master's throne or abolish it. The spiritual 
aspect of the labor movement is the desire, not for 
more wages only, but for opportunity in which to reach 
out in quest for finer possessions and richer truths. 
The terrific industrial struggle may account for the 
materialistic doctrine, but it does not allow for the 
equally intense ethical and intellectual discontent. 



CHAPTER VI 

WITH WALT WHITMAN 

THE relationship that existed for nineteen years 
between Horace Traubel and Walt Whit- 
man was one of the most beautiful recorded 
anywhere in history. It reminds us of the brother 
love between Jonathan and David. It was more 
sacred, perhaps, than the ties of blood that bind 
father to son. The roots of the two men seemed 
to have met somewhere in the same spiritual ground. 
Whitman went to Camden in 1873 immediately 
following his breakdown in Philadelphia. He had 
come from Washington and was on his way to 
the Atlantic coast states to recuperate from a long 
and painful illness of paralysis resulting from his 
faithful ministrations to the sick and wounded soldiers 
of the Civil War. When Whitman crossed the ferry 
in 1873 he had no idea that he would pass the last full 
years of his life in Camden. At this period Whitman 
had but few staunch friends who believed in him. 
Many of those lived abroad. In America, conserva- 
tive and conventional despite her pretense of radical- 
ism, Whitman found it harder to gain a foothold for 
his democratic message. Leaves of Grass was not 
only subjected to the bitterest denunciation by intel- 
lectuals, scholars and conventional literary folk, but 
the author was made the target of the most abusive 
calumny, lies and suspicion ever heaped upon a liter- 
ary figure. Whitman went his own way, carved his 

59 



60 HORACE TRAUBEL 

path and listened to the turmoil that Leaves of Grass 
created. 

Although Camden did not open her arms to receive 
him, he was immediately welcomed into the Traubel 
home. Traubel's father had read his message and 
indorsed it. What is more, he indorsed Whitman, the 
man. Horace was at that time a mere lad of fifteen 
years. He opened his boyish heart to Walt and took 
him in, giving the poet his truest, purest love. Years 
later, when the boy became a man, Whitman referred 
to their first meetings. Traubel records the conversa- 
tion in his third volume of " With Walt Whitman In 
Camden " : 

" * Horace, you were a mere boy then : we met — 
don't you remember ? Not so often as now — not so 
intimately: but I remember you so well: you were 
so slim, so upright, so sort of electrically buoyant. 
You were like medicine to me — better than medicine : 
don't you recall those days? down on Stevens street, 
out front there, under the trees? You would come 
along, I would be sitting there: we would have our 
chats. Oh ! you were reading then like a fiend : you 
were always telling me about your endless books, 
books : I would have warned you, look out for books ! 
had I not seen that you were going straight not 
crooked — that you were safe among books.' 

"I asked him: *Well Walt — do you still think I 
go straight — that I am safe?' 

" He patted me on the head. ' You've gone from 
good to better right along: it'd have to be a damned 
crazy book to fool you. Why, Horace, I tremble in 
my boots for Leaves of Grass every time I see you 
open your eyes ! ' 

" I said : * Walt, do you remember the day you buried 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 61 

little Walter ? How we met — walked a bit : how we 
had a little chat: how you took the car at Fifth 
street — at Stevens there : how we met again an hour 
or so later on the boat ? I look back and see it all : 
you said : * Horace, it does me good — this air does me 
good : sort of makes me whole again after what I have 
gone through today/ 

*' W. was very quiet for a while. I wondered if he 
remembered meeting me that day. Finally he stirred 
around on the bed and exclaimed : * Yes ! now I do 
remember it: not all the details you mention but the 
circumstance : and I remember what maybe you have 
forgotten : that on the boat you bought some wild flow- 
ers from an old nigger mammy who had been all day 
trying to sell them in the city and was going home 
dispirited: you bought her flowers and handed them 
to me. Do you remember that ? ' When he spoke of 
it, yes. W. was palpably moved." 

At another time Traubel questioned Whitman: 

" * Just how do you suppose it came about — this 
relation of ours ? ' Walt, after a pause said quietly : 
* It didn't come about, Horace. I think it always 
was.' " 

In an introduction to the Everyman's Library edi- 
tion of Leaves of Grass, (1912) Traubel wrote : 

" Everybody found some reason for discrediting 
Whitman. They went to my mother and protested 
against my association with the ' lecherous old man'. 
They wondered if it was safe to invite him into their 
houses. I grew up in that atmosphere of suspicion. 
I got accustomed to thinking of him as an outlaw. 
But I had no doubts of him." 

Traubel's absolute belief and confidence in Whitman 
endured through all the years of Whitman's declining 



62 HORACE TRAUBEL 

life, until he died March 26, 1892, in the little frame 
dwelling at No. 328 Mickle street. 

Traubel saw Whitman some part of each day. As 
the years fled and the old poet grew more feeble, 
Traubel's vigilance increased. He catered to Whit- 
man's needs in a hundred different ways. He would 
bring Old Walt such papers and magazines as he knew 
would interest him. He ran his errands, not in the 
sense of obedience but in the spirit of love. Traubel's 
excellent training in a printing office qualified him to 
assume the details and responsibilities connected with 
the printing and publishing of the later editions of 
Whitman's books. Whitman was the first to recognize 
this, for in one of Traubel's copies of " Complete 
Poems and Prose" (1889), Whitman wrote the fol- 
lowing inscription : 

" To Horace Traubel from his friend the author, 
Walt Whitman, and my deepest heartfelt thanks go 
with it to H. T. in getting this book out — it is his 
book in a sense — for I have been closely imprison'd 
& prostrated all the time (June to December 1888) by 
sickness & disability — & H. T. has managed it all for 
me with copy, proofs, printing, binding, etc. The 
Volume, & especially * November Boughs ' and por- 
traits, could not now be existing, formulated as here, 
except thro, his faithful & loving kindness & industry, 
daily, unintermitted, unremunerated — 

W. W. Dec. 1888. 

Camden, New Jersey." 

In the tliird volume of '* With Walt Whitman In 
Camden" Traubel says: 

** I told him how good I felt over his inscription in 
my copy of the big book. *Ah! you like it?' * Yes.' 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 63 

' So do I ! — and what a trifle it is ! — the expression 
of an obligation — nothing more : in fact, the obliga- 
tion not half said — not at all said.' 

** I put in : * I did not accept it in that way : I took 
it in the camerado spirit/ W. then: *Ah! how much 
better that is. Such a debt can never be paid for in 
money, in confessions.' " 

On Wednesday, March 28, 1888, Traubel began to 
record the daily conversations he had with Whitman. 
Nothing was omitted from the record. Traubel had 
set down a small part of this record in three massive 
volumes. There is material enough for possibly seven 
others. Whitman understood and trusted Traubel 
quite as much as Traubel understood and believed in 
Whitman. 

Once Whitman said to him : " It won't be long, 
and I will be dead and gone; then they will hale you 
into court — put you in the witness box — ply you 
with questions — try to mix you up with questions; 
this Walt Whitman — this scamp poet — this arch- 
pretender — What do you make him out to be ? And 
you will have to answer — and be sure you answer 
honest, so help you God ! " 

Traubel says that Whitman was always willing that 
he should take along with him " the scraps of things " 
which he started to throw away. Traubel rescued 
many prescious " scraps " from the wood box in Whit- 
man's room. It is not likely that Whitman threw 
away much valuable data about himself and his period 
for Traubel was always cautioning him to be less reck- 
less in such matters. Whitman humored Traubel in 
this and frequently gave his future biographer letters 
and portraits, pieces of his own manuscripts and other 



64 HORACE TRAUBEL 

documents which Traubel put away with the record 
of the conversation relating to such material. Whit- 
man did not know that Traubel was keeping such a 
record, but he knew that Horace would write of their 
experiences together. In fact, Whitman often com- 
missioned him so to do, as on December 25, 1888, 
(third volume) : 

" I want you some day to write, to talk about me : 
to tell what I mean by Calamus : to make no fuss but to 
speak out of your knowledge: these letters will help 
you : they will clear up some things which have been 
misunderstood: you know what: I don't need to say. 
The world is so topsy turvy, so afraid to love, so afraid 
to demonstrate, so good, so respectable, so aloof, that 
when it sees two people or more people who really, 
greatly, wholly care for each other and say so — when 
they see such people they wonder and are incredulous 
or suspicious or defamatory, just as if they had some- 
how been the victims of an outrage." He paused. 
Then : " For instance, any demonstration between men 
' — any: it is always misjudged: people come to con- 
clusions about it : they know nothing : there is nothing 
to be known : yet they shake their wise heads — they 
meet, gossip, generate slander : they know what is not 
to be known — they see what is not to be seen : so they 
confide in each other, tell the awful truth: the old 
women men, the old men women, the guessers, the 
false-witnesses — the whole caboodle of liars and 
fools." 

" I said to W : * That's eloquent enough for Con- 
gress and true enough for the Bible.' 

** He shook his fist at me : * What do you know 
about either, anyhow ? ' " 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 65 

At another time Whitman said to Traubel : 

** You will be speaking of me many a time after I 
am dead; do not be afraid to tell the truth, good or 
bad, for or against' only be afraid not to tell the 
truth." Traubel replied : " I promise not to send you 
down in history wearing another man's clothes." 
Whitman nodded and said fervently : " That's all I 
could ask, Horace." The monumental record in three 
volumes now before the public are proof of how faith- 
fully Traubel kept his promise. Whitman always 
evaded the questioner. He hated to be prodded into 
action. In everything he did he proceeded with the 
confidence that he had all the time in the world 
necessary to achieve the task before him. In speaking 
of this trait in Whitman, Traubel said that when he 
desired an immediate decision from Walt concerning 
work which he might be doing for him at the time, 
he would tell Whitman that he had done this or that, 
knowing that to have done thus or so would be against 
Whitman's wishes. Whitman would then explode 
with : " What the hell did you do that for ? I wanted 
it done this way," explaining exactly what he wanted 
done. Traubel would then assure Old Walt that 
nothing had been done against his wishes, that he 
simply wanted to know what Whitman did want him 
to do. 

** Horace, I do believe you're the only one of the 
fellows — of all, of all, who is willing to let me do as 
I please." 

** That's not because I always agree with you," Trau- 
bel replied. Whitman laughed, and answered : " I 
know, I know, but you never interfere, you never push 
in, you never take me by the neck and shake the life 



66 HORACE TRAUBEL 

out of me for disagreeing with you about the use of 
commas, or the sizes of the margins, or the colors of 
musHns on the backs of books." At another time 
Whitman confided to Traubel thus: 

" Horace, you are the only person in the world whose 
questions I tolerate. Questions are my bete noir; even 
you at times, damn you, try me, but I answer your 
questions because you seem to have a superior right to 
ask them, if any one has, which may be doubted. 
Cross-examinations are not in the terms of our con- 
tract, but you do certainly sometimes put me through 
the fire in great shape." Walt laughed. Then : " Now 
Horace, you see how much I love you. You have ex- 
torted my last secret. You have made me tell you 
why you are an exceptional person; you have forced 
from me an avowal of affection." 

Traubel was writing his own thoughts while under 
the influence of Whitman. One evening in the eighties 
Walt said to him : 

" I am watching your pieces as they appear in the 
papers and magazines, reading them all : you are on the 
right track — you will get somewhere. I don't seem 
to have any advice to give you except, perhaps, this: 
Be natural, be natural, be natural. Be a damned fool, 
be wise if you must (can't help it), be anything, only 
be natural. Almost any writer who is willing to be 
himself will amount to something — because we all 
amount to something, to about the same thing at 
the roots. The trouble mostly is that writers become 
writers and cease to be men; writers reflect writers; 
writers again reflect writers, until the man is worn 
thin, worn through. You seem to want to be honest 
with yourself. I'm sure I couldn't think of a better 
thing for anyone." 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 67 

Whitman acknowledged that Traubel understood 
him, perceived him, better than any other person. In 
compiling a record of their conversations, which is 
so accurate and faithful that it becomes almost a 
stenographic report, Traubel made use of method. To 
this he refers in the first volume : 

" My method all along has been not to trespass and 
not to ply him too closely with questions necessary or 
unnecessary. When a lull occurs I sometimes get him 
going again by making a remark that is not a question. 
Other times we sit together for long periods in 
silence, neither saying anything. One evening during 
which we had not done much more than sit together, 
he on his chair and I on his bed, he said : * We have 
had a beautiful talk — a beautiful talk.' I called it 
a Quaker talk. He smiled quietly, * That will de- 
scribe it. But, oh, how precious ! ' At another time 
as we parted for the night he said, as he took my hand 
and pressed it fervently : * I am in luck. Are you ? I 
guess God just sent us for each other.' Another good 
night had the words : * We are growing nearer to- 
gether. That's all there is in life for people — just to 
grow near together.' " 

One might wonder how Traubel was able to report 
Whitman so accurately in the flash and current of their 
talks. On many occasions there was a third, or even 
a fourth person present in Whitman's room at the 
same time. Traubel's skill on such occasions was put 
to the triple, or quadruple, test. In the first place, 
Traubel had read endlessly and deeply in his youth. 
He absorbed what he read. No matter who Whitman 
mentioned in the literary firmament Traubel had heard 
of or knew something of the work of the person Whit- 



^--' 



68 HORACE TRAUBEL 

man was talking about. He could not have done the 
work at all had he not possessed a wide knowledge of 
writers and literature. Frequently, in the dim-lighted 
room Traubel would be able to make hurried notes 
while the conversation flowed. At other times this 
could not be done. Again, Traubel's retentive mind 
and an almost perfect memory enabled him to put 
down on paper the entire conversation immediately 
after he left Whitman's presence each day. Some- 
times his notes were written on the ferry boat going to 
Philadelphia. I treasure the possession of several of 
these original notes of conversations with Whitman, 
and they appear in his books exactly as they were 
written thirty years ago. 
^ In 1906 appeared the first volume of "With Walt 
Whitman in Camden." The second appeared in 1909, 
the third in 1914. In reviewing these books critics 
have called Traubel the *' American Boswell." One 
critic called the Whitman books " the most truthful 
biography in the language." 

In 1893, a year after Whitman's death, Traubel had 
a large share in editing the quarto volume, " In Re 
Walt Whitman," a cluster of written matter made up 
to include several articles much esteemed by Whit- 
man as interpretations of his history, and other 
pieces — abstract, descriptive, anecdotal, biographical, 
statistical and poetical. This volume, the editors of 
which were Whitman's literary executors, Traubel, 
Richard Maurice Bucke, deceased, and Thomas B. 
Harned, had a restricted circulation, only one thou- 
sand numbered copies being published. 

The universality of TraubeFs fame as Walt Whit- 
man's biographer is acknowledged even by those who 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 69 

deny him his own right to the title of poet and 
prophet. Had Traubel not written a single line outside 
of his Whitman books he would still be accorded high 
rank in literature. One critic said that no complete 
life of Whitman can be written until Traubel had pub- 
lished his full record of "With Walt Whitman In 
Camden." The two men stood together, in life as in 
immortality. Their names will be as inseparable in his- 
tory as they were in the sunset of Whitman's life. 
And yet, as great as Traubel's Whitman books are, and 
in spite of the claim of the critics that he has out- 
Boswelled Boswell, Traubel's own personal work de- 
serves the higher consideration, and entitles him to a 
major place in the letters of his day and of the future. 
It should be remembered that Traubel wrote the 
biography, or, as one critic has called it, " Whitman's 
unconscious autobiography," more than a score of 
years ago. In recent years he merely copied some of 
his notes and put them into books. 

Since Whitman's death Traubel wrote his own mes- 
sage to the world. Were Whitman alive he would 
probably be the first to accord Traubel a high rank 
as poet and prophet. An increasing number of per- 
sons are insisting that Traubel, the biographer, shall 
not usurp the place of Traubel, the poet. The Whit- 
man books were only an incidental part of Traubel's 
work. Of course Whitman's personality had a tre- 
mendous influence upon Traubel's life. But we shall 
see that Traubel wrote out of his own soul and contact 
with life and affairs. 

Whitman was to Traubel what the sun, the rain and the 
wind are to the earth. Traubel, the earth, absorbed all of 
Whitman, the elements ; and out of Traubel's own soul 



70 HORACE TRAUBEL 

and brain grew the perfect fruit in the form of what 
a devoted and discriminative minority beheve are 
among the most classical and democratic poems and 
short monographs in the language. Traubel never 
appraised his own work. When one told him he had 
written a good poem or essay he turned his searching, 
inquiring eyes upon him and asked : "Do you think so ?" 
Like Whitman, Traubel did not make claims for him- 
self. He was too busy making claims for the crowd. 
1 have caught him in moments of deep reverie when 
he appeared to be doubtful if his writing was worth the 
effort, but he never doubted if his message was worth 
the effort of the writing. In the latter he never fal- 
tered ; never pulled in the lines. " I go where my heart 
goes," he said. That is the best reason Traubel would 
give anyone for his writing and his movements. Traubel 
never got in Whitman's way. He never blocked the 
current of Walt's democratic and prophetic message. 
He declared Leaves of Grass was the greatest book 
— the Bible of the cosmos — and that Whitman was 
the most significant figure in literature. Whitman's 
spirit travelled a long way with Traubel's soul. Traubel 
had in a sense popularized Whitman. Also people have 
became more searching. Through all the long years 
of fierce struggle and adversity in his own career Trau- 
bel never let Whitman down. He was the constant 
and invisible force behind the Whitman propaganda, 
insisting always upon recognition for the Bard of 
Camden. 

Each year, on May 31, the anniversary of the birth 
of Walt Whitman is celebrated by his friends and 
admirers who constitute the Walt Whitman Fellow- 
ship, International, of which Traubel was secretary. 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 71 

The biggest event was always held in New York City 
at the Hotel Brevoort. Traubel quietly arranged for 
these gatherings each year. Speeches were made by 
prominent persons, and it was noteworthy that Trau- 
bel had the least to say. It was a celebration of Whit- 
man. Traubel kept in the background busying himself 
with details that fall upon the chairman of an enter- 
tainment committee. Those Whitman gatherings were 
informal affairs, each celebrant having the privilege 
to say his say after the program. In the forum Trau- 
bel sometimes said a few words. In spite of his illness 
in the Spring of 1914 which prevented him from being 
present at the celebration, Traubel arranged the details 
from his sick bed. That was the first time the Whit- 
manites had occasion to realize the unostentatious 
power that radiated from the personality of the man, 
who for twenty-six consecutive years had made the 
celebrations possible. Traubel's absence proved the 
strength of his presence. I told Horace that Rose 
Karsner and myself had arranged with a mixed group 
of freethinkers at Arden, Delaware, a single-tax 
colony, for a Whitman anniversary celebration, dur- 
ing which we planted a sprig of lilac in memory of the 
poet. A few days later Traubel, who was convalesc- 
ing, sent this letter to us : 

Camden, June 2, 1914. 
Dears, both of you. I'm ever so much better today. 
It seems to me it cant be long before I'm out again. 
You must had some beautiful hours together there 
Sunday celebrating together. Anne and I were here 
alone. We had roses in the room and said our prayers 
in silence. 

Love, Horace. 



n HORACE TRAUBEL 

Although Whitman was impartial towards revolu- 
tionary political and industrial propaganda he instinc- 
tively uttered the spirit of revolt — "the word en 
masse." A way back in those years Traubel persisted 
in drawing Whitman out on the labor question. Whit- 
man was not always willing to be drawn out for at 
least two reasons. First, because he did not wish to 
plunge himself in controversial debate; second, be- 
cause he admitted to Traubel that he " might brush 
up a bit " on the labor question. But Traubel was not 
satisfied. Traubel thought he knew what was wrong 
with the world. So did Whitman. But Traubel was 
convinced of the proper remedy, while Whitman was 
not and did not much concern himself about it. This 
situation prompted many spirited discussions between 
the old poet and the young revolutionist. The follow- 
ing from the third volume of " With Walt Whitman 
In Camden " is typical of such an occasion. Whitman 
had received an anarchist paper and put it aside for 
Traubel. 

Whitman said : " I don't see what they are driving 
at — what the anarchists want: I do not understand 
what they want : I do not understand what the Henry 
George men want: nor do I trouble myself about it." 
* But you do trouble yourself about it,' I said. 

" * What do you mean ? ' * Your book is full of 
anarchism and Henry George.' 

** He looked at me : ' You mean by implication ? that 
I throw off sparks that way ? ' * Yes.' * Well, I sup- 
pose I do: I am sure, taken that way, that I might 
be convicted of a hundred philosophies.' 
. " * You say you don't know what the anarchists 
want, what the Henry George men want : are you sure 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 73 

you don't?' He replied: * If you ask me to tell you 
what their contention is I can't tell you.' 

" * Their contention is the same as yours. You re- 
member what you told Pease here in this room ? * 
*Oh! he was the Socialist? that English fellow: a 
nice fellow, too. What did I tell Pease ? ' * You said 
you didn't so much object to Socialism as to being 
talked to about it.' He laughed. * Did I say that? 
Well why shouldn't I have said that: that's what I'm 
trying to say now.' ' But why don't you say it then? 
The way you talked I should judge your objection to 
Tucker and the other fellows to be general, wholesale.' 

" ' No indeed. I would not have that implied : I 
honor them: I know they are probably working in 
their own way to produce what I working in my own 
way am trying to produce.' * You ask : what do they 
want : what do they want? Let me ask you : what do 
you want ? ' * Do you mean that as a question for me 
to answer ? ' * Yes ; I'd like to hear you answer it.' 
' Suppose I would rather not answer it ? ' * I would 
continue to want to hear you answer it anyhow.' " 
(Traubel notes that Whitman weighed the question a 
few moments before answering.) 

Then : " ' I want the people : most of all the peo- 
ple : men, women, children : I want them to have what 
belongs to them : not a part of it, but all of it : I want 
anything done that will give the people their proper 
opportunities — their full life: anything, anything: 
whether by one means or another, I want the people to 
be given their due.' I said : * That don't sound like a 
plea for millionaires.' ' I suppose not : the million- 
aires don't need anyone to plead for them : they are in 
possession.' - I inquired : * You want the people to 

I 



74 HORACE TRAUBEL 

have all : how are they to get all ? ' * Oh ! there is the 
rub : how are they ? Do you know ? who knows ? I 
wonder if anybody knows/ 

" ' Well, Tucker thinks he knows : Henry George 
thinks he knows : Pease thought he knew.' ' But do 
they know ? * W. cried : ' Every doctor knows, but do 
the doctors cure people?* 

" I asked W. : * How do you know these men don't 
know if you don't look into what they propose ? ' He 
smiled. * Damn you ! You're like a lawyer ! That 
was a blow between the eyes.' I added : * What they 
want — what Tucker wants, what George wants, what 
Pease wants — is exactly what you want: you want 
the people to own their product — to not make beauti- 
ful and useful things for the masters to enjoy. There 
must be a way out. Why isn't it as much your busi- 
ness as any other's to try to find what this way out is ? ' 
He answered at once : * I suppose you are holding me 
up with good reason : I have no right to discourage the 
boys : they are doing their work — big work it is, too, 
I acknowledge : they are devoted — they sacrifice them- 
selves to it: it needs to be done: the people must 
resume their inheritance.' ' Or assume it,' I said : 
* They have never so far had it — therefore have not 
lost it.' 

" * You are cute : you see all around it — all around 
me, in fact: I acknowledge that I am wholly ignorant 
— that I might brush up a bit in this line and not be 
hurt by it/" Traubel persisted in probing Whitman 
farther. 

" * Suppose millionaires were abolished — that mil- 
lionairism became impossible, would you feel unhappy 
over it?' * What mef God no! Aint that my pro- 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 75 

gram ? * * That's what I'm trying to find out : I want 
to see if you do have a program/ " 

A moment later Traubel shot straight out again. 

" * I thought from what you said of Tucker and 
George that you were maybe a bit reactionary ! ' He 
fairly yelled at me : * To hell with your reaction ! to 
hell with it ! I may be dodging your doctrines : I'm 
not dodging your purpose : I am with you all in what 
you aim for : solidarity, the supremacy of the people : 
all the people in possession of what belongs to all the 
people but has been stolen from them : I'm with you 
in that: but I can't follow you in all the intricate 
involvements, theories, through which you pursue your 
fierce agitations.' " 

On another occasion Whitman told Traubel that he 
" felt almost sure Socialism is the next thing coming." 

Then later on he said : " Horace you'll be in the 
thick of -the fight after I'm gone : my days are few : 
but you have years ahead — years of vicissitude — of 
active agitation : you are one of the rebels : you will 
have to take 3^our part in the fight. God bless you 
whatever you do ! I know that what you do for your- 
self, for others, in those days you'll also do for me. 
God bless you ! " 

How prophetic was Whitman ! How well he under- 
stood Traubel ! He knew the young man of hot head 
and fiery heart would some day be in the thick of the 
social war for political and industrial peace. He was 
willing to trust Traubel to do and say for him what 
Traubel would do and say for others. I have quoted 
from the Whitman and Traubel talks as recorded in 
the latter's books to show how clearly Traubel under- 
stood the labor question away back in those years when 
to be a Socialist was tantamount to self-inflicted ostra- 



76 HORACE TRAUBEL 

cism. I have said that Whitman exercised a tremen- 
dous influence over Traubel. I am now willing to say 
that Traubel also exercised an influence over Whitman. 
I have heard persons ask : " What would Traubel have 
been without Whitman ? " We could, in good taste, 
ask : " What would Whitman have been without 
Traubel?" 

Following is one of Traubel's poems in memory of 
his days with Walt : 

O MY DEAD COiMRADE. 

FOR W. W. 

my dead comrade — my great dead! 

1 sat by your bedside — it was the close of day — 

I heard the drip of the rain on the roof of the house: 

The light shadowed — departing, departing — 

You also departing, departing — 

You and the light, companions in life, now, too, companions 

in death, 
Retiring to the shadow, carrying elsewhere the benediction of 

your sunbeams. 
I sat by your bedside, I held your hand : 
Once you opened your eyes : O look of recognition ! O look 

of bestowal! 
From you to me then passed the commission of the future. 
From you to me that minute, from your veins to mine, 
Out of the flood of passage, as you slipped away with the 

tide, 
From your hand that touched mine, fronr your soul that 

touched mine, near, O so near — 
Filling the heavens with stars — 
Entered, shone upon and out of me, the power of the spring, 

the seed of the rose and the wheat. 
As of father to son, as of brother to brother, as of god to 

god! 
O my great dead! 



WITH WALT WHITMAN 77 

You had not gone, you had stayed — in my heart, in my 

veins, 
Reaching through me, through others through me, through 

all at last, our brothers, 
A hand to the future. 



CHAPTER VII 

AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM 

THE logical sequence of economic reasoning is 
the desire to emancipate the workman Dy 
rewarding him for his honest labor with 
honest pay. It is the desire to give to the work- 
man the full product of his toil, and to also give 
to the purchaser the full product of his invest- 
ment. The latter part of the nineteenth century 
saw the development of the machine and the degrada- 
tion of the mechanic. Thomas Carlyle suspected the 
trend of industry but he did not fathom its potential 
meaning. John Ruskin saw the triangular misunder- 
standing between the workman, the manufacturer and 
the consumer when he said: 

" The false, unnatural, and destructive system is 
when the bad workman is allowed to offer his work at 
half price, and either take the place of the good, or 
force him by his competition to work for an inadequate 
sum." 

William Morris sensed the economic problems and 
he adopted a philosophy through which he thought 
they might be solved. Walt Whitman understood that 
the workman and his work must find common ground 
if society was to be benefited and the vision of man 
enlarged. He was the champion of the toiler and he 
was tolerant of any organization or program through 
which the laborer sought to dignify his labor. But 

7^ 



AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM 79 

Traubel was more definite, more positive than any of 
these thinkers and doers. He experimented. 

From 1903 to 1907 he was associated with Hawley 
McLanahan and the late Will Price, Philadelphia 
architects, in publishing The Artsman, " a sort of 
parish record," as they called it, of Rose Valley, a 
crafts experiment. McLanahan gives us the purpose 
of this movement launched on the outskirts of Phila- 
delphia. He says: 

" Rose Valley is not an impractical or visionary 
undertaking but a concrete business proposition. The 
Rose Valley Association was chartered in July, 1901, 
under Pennsylvania state laws, for the purpose of 
encouraging the manufacture of such articles involving 
artistic handicraft as are used in the finishing, decorat- 
ing and furnishing of houses. In entering upon this 
work Rose Valley unites with various other societies 
throughout the world in a general protest against the 
often vulgar product of the modern machine and 
against the consequent degradation and ruin of the 
craftsman. The minute division of labor that has 
come about in our almost automatic industry seems 
indeed not only to destroy the craftsman but to 
threaten the man. 

" Rose Valley is to do what it can to break down the 
artificial distinction made in modern society between 
the work of the hand and the work of the brain. 
Rose Valley is convinced that manual labor must be 
restored to Its rightful place of priority and honor." 
Plere was the ideal struggling for expression. 

" The site taken up comprises about eighty acres of 
land once largely occupied with spacious stone mills 
and picturesque tenant houses." The mill walls were 
to be utilized in the development of the shops. The 



80 HORACE TRAUBEL 

former tenant houses were remodeled into comfortable 
homes, supplied with necessary modern appointments. 
A small garden was provided for each house, offering 
opportunity for flower and vegetable cultivation. A 
creek running through the settlement afforded diver- 
sion for those who cared for boating and bathing. 

" The workman in the Rose Valley Shop," wrote 
McLanahan, *' looks out upon green trees, distant fields 
and flowing streams — a more inspiring scene, truly, 
than brick walls and chimney tops.'* William Morris 
said " those who are to make beautiful things must live 
in a beautiful place." Rose Valley aimed to practise 
this. 

" It is absurd ", McLanahan continued, *' to expect 
men who spend eight hours each day in an uncom- 
fortable factory, and sixteen hours in equally uncom- 
fortable streets and homes, to produce the sort of work 
which under the proper auspices the same brains and 
the same hands would be sure to evoke. The great 
distances between the scattered homes of the city 
workmen makes mutual life which comes easily at 
Rose Valley impossible." 

Will Price, one of the founders, asks : "Is Rose 
Valley worth while? Is anything worth while except 
a blind acceptance of customary conditions and a dumb 
hope that somehow through evolution or through some 
agency external to man a better condition will come? 
It is at least worth while to consider what all our pain- 
ful struggle is about and why we carry it on. All men 
at some future time and in some faint degree have 
dreams of a golden age, and a hope so universal must 
always foreshadow some new epoch." 

In the same number of The Artsman, October, 1903, 
from which the foregoing quotations are taken, Trau- 



AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM 81 

bel wrote : " Rose Valley is a cross between economic 
revolution and the stock exchange. Rose Valley is not 
shutting one door and opening another. Rose Valley 
connects in the open with industrial fact. It is not a 
break. It is an evolution. .... Rose Valley is 
not altogether a dream or wholly an achievement. It 
is an experiment. It is also an act of faith. It is not 
willing to say what it will do. It is only willing to say 
what it is trying to do. Rose Valley pays a first 
tribute to labor. Labor is the social base. Our mod- 
ern world had quarreled with this disposition of values. 
And many who do not share its quarrel still shrink 
from making a concession to labor. Rose Valley 
knows and acknowledges the situation. . . . Rose 
Valley is not under any illusions. It does not think it 
is doing singlehanded a work which is at last winning 
intercontinental allies. It is one figure in a movement 
much more portentous than any individual instance of 
devotion could shape or weigh. . . . The carver 
carving wood is at work scripturing the daily life of 
man. To make the joint of a chair what it should be 
is an act as holy as hymning an abstract creed. Rose 
Valley does not say any contradicting formula is wholly 
wrong. It does not assume that its formula is wholly 
right. It is undertaking to prove to itself first of all 
that work may be made holy through the freedom of 
its workman. Rose Valley may fail. But its faith 
cannot fail. Its temporal implements may prove too 
weak. The wisdom or the backbone of its co-opera- 
tive force may break in the test. But the experiment 
is worth putting to the proof. . . . The Rose 
Valley shops are temples. Here men pray in their 
work. Here men practice fellowship in their work. 



82 HORACE TRAUBEL 

The shops have only one creed. That creed is good 
work. There is only one apostasy at Rose Val- 
ley. That apostasy is bad work. . . . Rose 
Valley would make every tool of its carver, every 
letter of its font of type, contribute something 
to the sum total of practical piety. I can see 
God in the honest joint of a chair. I can see God 
woven in tapestries and beaten in brasses and bound in 
the covers of books. You have taken the ideal away 
from the commonplace and refuged it on the side of 
special acts and hours. Rose Valley sees the ideal in 
its shops, in every day service, arbitrating the differ- 
ences of work. Rose Valley has not withdrawn from 
the world. It is in the world. It is to fight its battle 
on the field upon which it finds a challenge. It is not 
an ideal. It is a step towards an ideal. It is not 
standing in the way of any agent of social evolution. 
It is co-operating with agents. . . . Why should 
not the man and the machine sit down and reason 
together? We have got the man and the machine at 
odds. Instead of asking questions of each other they 
are accusing each other. . . . The machine- 
made man is against the race. The man-made ma- 
chine IS for the race. Ten thousand machine successes 
do not together make one success. The only successes 
that guarantee and perpetuate success are human suc- 
cesses. . . . The machine can make a machine. 
It cannot make a man. It can produce miracles. But 
the one miracle that is worth while comes in the old 
way. No man must be against the machine. But 
every man must take care that the machine is not 
against man. The machine that defers to man should 
be given right of way. But the philosophy under 



AN EXPERIMENT IN COMMUNISM 83 

whose dictum man must defer to the machine should 
be refused all parole." 

I have quoted Traubel at length to show how ele- 
mental and far reaching were his meanings. " Shops 
are temples ! " " Men pray in their work ! " "I can see 
God in the honest joint of a chair !" These are appeals 
to equity, justice and honesty. The failure of Rose 
Valley does not prove the fallacy of its foundation. 
The cloud does not prove the deception of the sun. 
The withered sprout does not prove the corruption of 
the oak. Traubel and his associates gave to the world 
something it was not ready to receive. Rose Valley 
was the premature child of its economic mother. It 
was not a step backward into industrial competition, 
but rather a leap forward into the social commune. 
Rose Valley was the social spirit incorporated into 
economic fact. It was the harbinger of the co-opera- 
tive commonwealth heralding its message of freedom 
in the camp of industrial slavery. It was the expres- 
sion of " hope that some men, released from the dead- 
ening influences of monotonous unthinking toil, may 
see such possibilities in life as will make them put their 
shoulders to the wheel and strive to lift society out of 
the rut of accustomed thought or habit." 



CHAPTER VIII 

COMRADE AND L0VE5 

I FEEL a certain timorousness in attempting to sketch 
the daily life of Horace Traubel as he lived it 
in those full and flowing years prior to his 
first illness in the Spring of 1914. All who knew 
Traubel were bound to reckon with him. He was a 
tremendous personal force and his magnetic person- 
ality had influence upon all who came into contact 
with him. 

The question as to whether persons received more 
inspiration from Traubel personally, than they did 
from his writings, or vice versa, must pass on un- 
answered. No two persons would likely give an iden- 
tical analysis of the same person or his utterances. 

There are many persons, who, in their quest for 
interesting people look for them in the gilded places, 
the brilliant parlors, the banquet halls, the rendezvous 
of intellectuals and the haunts and habitats of scholars 
and literary folk. Traubel was never to be found in 
such places. He was among the crowds ; among the un- 
titled and untutored mob ; in the common restaurants ; 
in the dingy halls where some rich message was being 
expounded; maybe he was in the crowd standing in 
front of a baseball score board in Philadelphia on 
most any scorching afternoon ; or maybe he was in the 
bleachers at the ball game, shouting exultantly with 
th« excited " fans.'* 

84 



COMRADE AND LOVER 85 

Before 1914, in the small hours of the morning, 
when the pulse of the world was lowest, when the de- 
parting moon was making its adieu to the coming sun, 
when the revelers and strayers abandoned conventional 
restraint in the nocturnal freeground of the spirit, one 
might have seen Traubel, a green bag under his arm, 
homeward bound after his day's work was done, 
trudging down Chestnut street to the Camden ferry 
boat, stopping here and there to greet a tired police- 
man, or an alert newsboy, or speaking to some hapless 
girl of the streets, a word of kindness. No matter 
whether he was in New York, Montreal, Boston, or 
at home in Philadelphia, Traubel mixed with the 
crowds. " I would rather miss the stars and flowing 
river; I would rather miss anything else than one of 
them," he said, " for it is not the flame that lights 
the little fires, it is the little fires that make the 
flame." On the ferry boat in that witching hour he 
usually met one or two newspaper men. In the few 
minutes that it took the boat to cross the river these 
men had approved or criticised and arrived at conclu- 
sions on the current news happenings of the day 
several hours before the world had washed its face. 

When Traubel reached home in those days of his 
physical vigor he invariably critically read a book until 
five or six o'clock. Then he went to bed. He would 
rise again by ten o'clock, sleeping five hours at the 
most. At noon, he crossed the river, walked up 
Chestnut street, dropping a cheery word to his numer- 
ous acquaintances, not excluding an old apple woman 
and " Blind Al," who kept a fruit and paper stand at 
Independence Square for twenty-five years. It was 
usually one o'clock before he reached his study and 



86 HORACE TRAUBEL 

printing shop in the garret of a four story office build- 
ing at 1631 Chestnut street, situated in the business 
heart of the Quaker City. At the door was Traubel's 
ample wooden mail box. It was true when he sang: 

The world leaves its mail at my door: every morning and all 
day leaves its mail: 

Into the little box there a few inches by a few inches pours 
the flood of its interchange: ^ 

Like seas crowded into a cup, like stars packed into a case, 
like the whole concentrated into a fragment: 

Every morning and all day streams into that little reservoir 
the treasure of the earth: 

From here and everywhere: from lands I know and lands 
I dont know: brings its sacred tribute: 

The mails : letters of love and hate : letters of trade and revo- 
lution: brings it all. 

Traubel wrote each day a score of letters by his own 
hand. A friend in distress would receive a line or two 
of cheer. Like a faithful doctor watching over his 
patients, Traubel sent these daily missives out from his 
heart to people he knew and to those he had never seen. 
To little children would come his notes of endearment 
and picture postal cards. Following is a note he wrote 
on his birthday to our little baby girl, Walta, who was 
then scarcely a month old : 

New York, December 19, 1914. 
Dear Walta, old lady. 

I'm fifty-six years young today. And you're no 
years old today. Across all discrepancies of age and 
experience I pass myself to you and you pass your- 
self to me. Who can penetrate the mystery which has 
brought you here for me or kept me here for you ? 

Horace Traubel. 



COMRADE AND LOVER 87 

I choose at random one of Traubel's typical letters 
from a batch : 

New York, Dec. 8, 1913. 
I've been sort of listening for good news from you 
today. I came away on this mission with no heart 
in me for it. My long fight against adversities in this 
damned money tussle has made me hate the system 
worse than ever. Some of the children at some future 
time will be born into a world in which some of the 
dreams of some of the fools may be fulfilled. 

Love, Dave. 

Horace. 

Frequently Traubel passed letters he had received 
on to other friends to read. Thus, an acquaintanceship 
was often established between persons who had never 
met face to face. In this way many friendships were 
made. 

Radical newspapers and magazines by the hundreds 
came to Traubel's office and not one was thrown away 
until he had carefully scanned it for matter he either 
wanted to keep for reference or to send to his friends. 
Traubel devoted one or two hours each day in looking 
over these exchanges and the half dozen newspapers 
he purchased. Like a trained editor, he glanced at 
column after column, clipping here, penciling there. 
To his friend who worked in a bank Traubel would 
send clippings and articles on banking and finance. To 
his friend on the stage would go bits about the drama 
and theatrical folk. His friend contemplating mother- 
hood would receive clippings on the care children 
should have. In other words, he was literally a bureau 
of voluntary information. 



88 HORACE TRAUBEL 

No one could meet Traubel without immediately 
being conscious of his unusual and powerful person- 
ality. His appearance alone instantly attracted all who 
came in contact with him. His stature was short and 
thick, "the full throat, the noble, splendidly shaped 
head, the intensely alive mobile face with its large, 
eager, blue eyes, and lips determined and impetuous 
under the short moustache, the crowning glory of 
thick, loosely tossed white hair, all go to make up an 
individuality which is at once that of a radiant boy 
and of a supreme seer," wrote Mildred Bain in her 
sketch of him.* He wore the simplest clothes, and 
used to go without an overcoat even in the coldest 
Canadian weather. His hat was soft, grey felt which 
he folded up and stuck into his pocket. The inevitable 
flowing tie, usually a black one, was adjusted carelessly 
to an exceedingly low collar. 

Traubel's intense magnetism, his spontaneity of 
utterance, his untiring conversational and physical 
vigor left an indelible impression upon all who met 
him. Doubtless there were many persons, who, while 
in Traubel's presence, were conscious of him as a 
writer. But his own demeanor was not accountable 
for that impression. The sincerity of his friendship 
and his freedom-loving disposition were more readily 
discerned. 

Traubel's work shop consisted of two rooms, in the 
garret of 1631 Chestnut Street, Philadelphia. In one 
there were cases of type from which he not infre- 
quently set up the pages of The Conservator when he 
was too poor to employ a compositor. Then there were 

*" Horace Traubel," by Mildred Bain, page 14. A. & G. 
Boni, 1913. 



COMRADE AND LOVER 89 

huge, dust covered piles and boxes of back numbers 
of his publication, while stacks of faded newspapers 
and magazines, together with an accumulation of mis- 
cellaneous printed matter were strewn over the floor. 
But it was in the front room, his " shop," as he called 
it, where the chief interest lay. Numerous boxes, im- 
provised book cases, covered three walls and contained 
thousands of books on every subject under the sun. 
Hundreds of these were old prints which any modern 
collector would consider a gold mine, while hundreds 
of others were autographed copies. Such spaces of the 
walls that were not hidden by shelves of books were 
covered with old portraits, original paintings, drawings 
and cartoons, and photographs of authors, poets, 
friends and children. On a dusty couch and equally 
dusty chairs were TraubeFs hats and umbrellas, maybe 
a garment or two, and more books and newspapers 
and magazines. In the center of the floor stood a flat 
desk groaning under the weight of long paste-board 
boxes of letters from all sorts and conditions of men. 
There were letters written between Walt Whitman 
and Tennyson; from Brand Whitlock and William 
Jennings Bryan, and from such critics as Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, John Addington Symonds, Edward 
Dowden and William Michael Rossetti. There were 
others from John Burroughs, Joaquin Miller, Jack 
London, Julia Marlowe, and hundreds of others ; from 
artists and artisans ; from the famous and the obscure ; 
from the ambitious and the disconsolate. 

On the same desk and packed away in drawers were 
packages of manuscripts, many of which were those 
of Walt Whitman; others were from latter day 
celebreties known in every nook and corner of the 
world, while still others were from struggling scriveners 



90 HORACE TRAUBEL 

who hoped, and perhaps succeeded in having their ef- 
fusions printed in The Conservator. Lined up all 
about this desk were more boxes containing clippings 
and cartoons, an accumulation of thirty years. In 
another corner by the window was Traubel's work 
desk. Such a deluge of matter! Every pigeon hole 
and drawer ached with its compact treasure. Traubel 
would often complain of the condition of his studio. 
When visitors came he would apologetically clean off a 
chair, place its load onto another, and explain that he 
intended to clean house, a promise he had no intention 
of fulfilling. Fastidious women especially, were horri- 
fied at the apparent carelessness of Traubel's quarters. 

New York had its Bohemiana in Pfaff's where free- 
thinkers and waiters gathered, but Philadelphia, no 
less, had its 1840 Market Street, where college pro- 
fessors, newspaper men, professional singers and 
tutors, and business men who were rigid in trade but 
free in spirit, gathered at Tom Mills' (the waiter), 
table to ostensibly eat their meals, but to especially 
tear the world into shreds and then place it safely 
back upon its axis after vigorous and often white- 
heated discussions. Unconsciously, Traubel's person- 
ality was the motor that drove the current of free 
expression through the minds of these men and women. 
At a casual glace there was nothing unusual about the 
restaurant on Market street near Nineteenth, for it 
had the exterior and interior appearance of most any 
modern cafe. But at a table to one side and in the 
center of a long row there were eight, ten or twelve 
men and women crowded about it during the luncheon 
and dinner hours. 

Other patrons coming to and fro would stop and 



COMRADE AND LOVER 91 

wonder what sort of a group it was whose voices and 
repeated thumpings on the table were heard above the 
clatter of dishes and the noise of. other voices giving 
orders to the cook. These diners and debaters ran 
up and down the scale of thought with such bewilder- 
ing rapidity that Tom stood first on one foot and then 
on the other vainly attempting to wedge a word 
through the intellectual or mediocre discussion. Base- 
ball, pugilism, Christian Science, anarchism, vaccina- 
tion and vivisection, literature, drama, art, labor and 
capital, prohibition and women's suffrage were ap- 
proved and disapproved in this war and peace of 
words. When a person had sat through one of these 
sessions, which often lasted long after the cook had 
gone home, he might very fairly believe he had been 
listening to living encyclopedias whose statistics and 
data were challenged with almost sacrilegious im- 
punity. This group, whose numbers fluctuated with 
the change of residence, was known as the Pepper Pot 
Club, the title having been derived from one of the 
delectable dishes. When Traubel was absent from 
these spontaneous sessions they were conducted quite 
calmly. That does not mean he did all the talking, 
but the hub was missing from the wheel. 

During the year 1913, when my wife and I lived 
a block or so from Traubel's studio, he frequently 
came to our rooms in the evening. Sometimes he came 
alone, while on numerous occasions he was accom- 
panied by one or two of our mutual friends. These 
were evenings never to be forgotten. Into the little 
room the three of us, maybe four or five, discussed 
or were silent together. Often Traubel corrected 
proofs. Sometimes he read, and not infrequently he 



92 HORACE TRAUBEL 

took little ** cat naps." Within those four walls free 
spirits conspired to set the world at peace. We were 
materially a part of, yet spiritually removed from the 
struggles of the earth as our dreams soared to the 
heavens and kissed the stars. Our rooms might well 
have been termed a sort of headquarters for a small 
group of radicals who dropped in and out at their own 
pleasure. Frequently Traubel came for supper, and on 
such occasions he would assist in making ready for the 
meal and help in clearing away the debris. He was at 
ease with unostentatious people, and was democratic in 
manner and thought to an uncommon degree. 

In The Conservator for November, 1913 appeared 
Traubel's poem entitled ** My Dear Comrades Live 
Just Round The Corner," in which he made memor- 
able those inspiring evenings we spent together. The 
following is the first stanza : 

My dear comrades live just round the corner : 

I go to them in the evenings : we sit under the light and talk : 

Sometimes little is said : a word of this or that : only silence 

can sometimes tell what we feel: 
The three of us : the man my comrade, dear to me : the 

woman my comrade, dear to me : 
The simple man, whose common speech gets closer to me 

than the songs of David: 
The simple woman, whose wholesome quiet is sweeter to me 

than the odor of the rose: 
The three of us : one in three : three in one : coming without 

let, going without hindrance: 
They just round the corner from me: I just round the 

corner from them : so near : always within call : 
Understanding each other well: not needing to have each 

(.ther explained: 
Taking the fair and good for granted when things look the 

other way: always doing that: 



COMRADE AND LOVER 93 

Knowing for now and all the simple fact: knowing that 
heaven is. mine any time I reach for it: and theirs: 

In this war of profits living this peace of service: they with 
me: I with them: 

When the clouds are so thick they hide everything not hiding 
that : not hiding them from me or me from them : 

My comrade girl, darling of miles and hours: and him, her 
comrade lover, with whom I share this joy: 

Nearer to me than the skin on my bones: both of them: as 
near to me as the dreams of my soul : 

Taking m.e to themselves as theirs : they, demanding me : tak- 
ing them to myself as mine : I, demanding them : 

In the evenings under the light, round the corner from 
where I live: they with me: 

Seeing so much : saying so little : bringing the world into the 
little room to sit with us : 

Into the every day yes and no of our lips and hearts flashing 
immortal time: a man and a woman and their com- 
rade : 

My dear comrades live just round the corner. 

Traubel was so easily pleased. He was grateful for 
the smallest favor and the slightest recognition. A 
little gift of this or that — some little token as an ex- 
pression of a big love filled him with profound appre- 
ciation. In a copy of Chants Communal which he 
presented to Rose Karsner, Traubel wrote this inscrip- 
tion on the fly leaf: 
Philada. 
Nov. 4, 1913. 
Dear Rose, 

If you're half as willing to receive this book from 
me as I am to give it to you you'll be doing me such 
honor as I'll not readily forget. I like to look back 
upon the days and nights you and Dave and I have 
spent together in this room and up where you live. 
You have sort of provided me with an extra home 



94 HORACE TRAUBEL 

whose four walls are sacred to me. Or, rather, with 
an extra home without dimensions whose witness is 
the love you have so fully poured out in my behalf. 
I say this from my heart and I want you to realize that 
it stands for much more than could ever be put into 
words. 

Horace Traubel. 

For a similar avowal of his affection I turn to the 
fly leaf in the third volume of With Walt Whitman In 
Camden : 
April, 1914. 

This is a sort of workman's copy of my book for 
Rose and Dave Karsner whose lives have soundly 
become part of my life and whose joys and sorrows 
are therefore mine: for Rose. and Dave my darling 
comrades towards whom my heart always reaches in 
ardent love. 

Horace Traubel. 

A few days after the last mentioned book came we 
received a note from Traubel, penned by his daughter, 
telling us that he got back to Philadelphia from 
Montreal " all broken up " and was ** torn with pain 
from head to foot." He contracted a severe cold in 
Montreal which developed in Boston and New York, 
reached its climax in Philadelphia and forced him to 
go to bed in Camden with a complicated illness that 
was so grave as to threaten his life on two occasions 
during the five weeks of his confinement. This was 
the first time in his life of robust and vigorous health 
that he was obliged to lay off for sickness. I visited 
him frequently, both when he was sick to extremes 



COMRADE AND LOVER 95 

and while he was convalescing, and at no time did he 
utter a complaining or despondent word. He was 
always "getting along nicely" and expecting to be 
" out in a few days." When he was better I asked 
him if he realized how close a call he had and he re- 
plied that ** the doctors made a bigger fuss than was 
necessary." But I feel sure that Traubel was deeply 
concerned about his condition during the critical stages 
of his illness, and I am equally certain that his su- 
preme optimism and indomitable will together with 
the constant care given him by his wife were potent 
factors toward his recovery. A day or two after he 
got out of bed and was able to be propped up on a 
chair by a window Traubel wrote a poem. I happened 
in to see him a few days later. He was correcting 
the proof which he handed to me to read, saying, 
" See if that sounds like a sick man's poem." Follow- 
ing is the first stanza : 

I feel like a youngster again every morning : 
Everything begins again: all is new once more: I start re- 
juvenated : 
Whatever may have happened the day before, this happens 

to take its place: 
This renewal of life: this fresh perfume of the first dawn: 
The stale yesterdays are all repealed: the old things are all 

young : that which was dead is alive : 
The tired world is rested: the sick world is well: the cruel 

world is kind : 
Out of space and time the stars are reborn : out of the vast 

darkness the sun is relit: 
I who was so many years near death am so many more years 

near life : 
Here I am at the threshold : here I am helping myself freely 

to youth and faith : 



96 HORACE TRAUBEL 

It's all my own for me to do with as I please: here I can 

take all I need : 
At the edge of discovery: on the rim of the unseen: to fill 

myself with treasure: 
That's how it comes to me every morning when I wake up : 
I feel like a youngster again every morning. 

Mrs, Lillian Wetstein Mendelssohn, one of Traubel's 
many friends in Montreal, wrote a letter in October, 
1913 to Miss Esther Mendel, a friend, who was at 
the time, touring the country with the Sothern-Mar- 
lowe Company in Shakesperian plays. The following 
extract from Mrs. Mendelssohn's letter, which was 
never intended for the printer, shows how profound 
an impression Traubel made upon those who met him, 
and how naturally this impression was conveyed to 
others : 

** While we are speaking of tempera- 
ments — as to Horace Traubel. I will tell you just 
what I think of him. From a literary standpoint I 
can say without the least exaggeration and without 
being over enthused, that he is an intellectual giant. 
A man with a breadth of vision that is glorious, with 
the heart of the poet, and yet with the greatest mental 
balance; a most retentive mind and an eye that sees 
below the surface of everything right down to the 
fundamentals. He is daring, courageous. 

"Then just as a man — well it is hard to express 
one's feelings. He is a man in whom one could place 
the most implicit trust. I would stake everything on 
his absolute sincerity. He has a singularly full nature, 
a nature that feels the need of loving, not one person, 
but many. But he is also like a child in his craving 
for love. He is very sensitive and he likes to have 



COMRADE AND LOVER 97 

his own way, but as his own way is usually the best 
way I don't blame him. Just think, Esther! If any 
one of us should die why it would be only our own 
people and a few, a very few immediate friends who 
would feel any sense of loss ; but when the time comes 
for him to cross the bar! Think what it will mean 
to a vast number of people. Why a part of their 
very lives will be gone — a part of themselves, almost." 
Men of Traubel's type always attract a variety of 
radicals and faddists. Traubel expressed a literal 
truth when he said : " Every time an eccentric comes 
along the street he aims straight for me and asks: 
How are you comrade?" He was unusual because 
so many others are usual. He never claimed a patent 
on anything he said or did; in fact, he did not claim 
anything for himself that he would not claim for the 
humblest man. The ever recurrent wrangles of party 
and creed paled before Traubel's stout doctrine for all 
humanity. To him humanity was the most significant 
work in the language. He vehemently denied there 
were any foreigners except those who alienated them- 
selves from world ideals, world loves, world truths. 
Traubel's attitude toward life was not a superficial 
pose. He said : ** I am a man and you are a man. 
Let us greet one another gladly." He was a writer 
because he could not help writing. He was a poet not 
because he wrote poems, but because he attempted 
to live a poetic life. His life was surcharged with the 
fire of idealism that consumed the bad and conserved 
the good. If he had not been a writer he would prob- 
ably have been an artist or an agitator. Traubel 
claimed there was in each of us a divinity so much 
akin to God that we were impelled to express the 



98 HORACE TRAUBEL 

yearnings of our souls. Natural, useful living ex- 
presses itself in worthy deed. Traubel once wrote : 

*' Some people imagine that a purpose and a mission 
are the same thing. But that is a mistake. A man 
with a purpose is a pilgrim. A man with a mission 
is a pirate. Men with missions beat you down with a 
club. What are your petty affairs to a man with a 
mission? Get off the road. Step aside. See that he 
getes accomplished. It doesn't matter about you. 
Whether you are fulfilled or not. But the man with 
the mission. He must be confirmed. Postpone every- 
thing for him. Die for him to live. Starve for him 
to eat. The man who makes my shoes has as much 
a mission as the man who writes my books. Stop 
the printing presses. Dry up the inkwells. Make way 
for the shoemaker. Why not ? " 

Traubel detested literary show. Although he was 
known in literary circles in New York and Boston he 
did not court favor of editors or writers. In his days 
of health when he visited either of these cities he would 
hunt up a little group of radicals and revolutionists 
who were practically unknown outside of their own 
circle of acquaintances. He would go with them to 
the unpretentious restaurants and there they ex- 
changed stories, discussed a strike or a book and 
waxed eloquent on subjects of fundamental import. 
He shrank from all human superficiality. He would 
engage one in conversation about matters in which he 
knew his visitor was interested. He sought to learn 
another's point of view, but never hesitated to assert 
his own. His keen wit and incisive satire were fre- 
quently construed as an affront when none was in- 
tended. Very often he would remain quiet during the 



COMRADE AND LOVER 99 

entire length of a discussion. Then, all of a sudden 
he would burst out with approval or disapproval of 
what was said. Many times he was silently irritated 
or demonstratively intolerant when a slurring remark 
was made against a vital principle. He was easily 
ruffled when opposed in verbal combat without being 
personally angry at his opponent. Traubel could never 
have been a public figure in the sense of holding an 
office. He was too frank, too candid, too certain of 
his own ground to yield one iota to a compromising 
point of view. He made a few speeches to little revo- 
lutionary groups, but aside from these he rarely ap- 
peared on public platforms. He felt comfortable in 
an audience, and more comfortable in a gallery. He 
was passionately fond of music, and for a score of 
years he occupied the same seat in the top gallery of 
the Academy of Music in Philadelphia, where sym- 
phony concerts were held every Saturday evening 
during the musical season. Traubel got much of his 
deepest inspiration from these symphonies: 

While the orchestra plays you, mighty symphony, 

While the masters and critics are debating what you mean, 

I stand here and there listening and I say nothing. 

Traubel had an utter disregard for money. Al- 
though he never had much at one time, he spent 
liberally of what he had. When in a small party of 
friends he was usually the first to offer to pay for 
the simple pleasures in the form of a moving picture 
show, or a ** treat " to ice cream, or a trolley ride. He 
did not regard these little outlays as an expense, but 
rather as an investment in good fellowship. He was 
lincomfortabl§ when in debt, and he contracted no 



100 HORACE TRAUBEL 

personal obligations other than those for the bare 
necessities of life. 

It was both humorous and pathetic to watch him 
open a letter containing some small sum from one of 
his many Conservator debtors or from a new sub- 
scriber. He was thoroughly business-like in immedi- 
ately crediting the sum to the debtor's subscription, 
but his disregard for money and business methods was 
manifested by the fact that he frequently slipped the 
cash or check back into the envelope, and carried it 
for days in his pocket, only to finally place the letter 
in a packet with others, forgetting its contents. A 
case in point was when he once showed Rose and me 
an old letter from Joaquin Miller, *' the poet of the 
Sierras." The envelope was brown vv^ith age and the 
ink had turned a reddish hue. As we opened the 
missive a dollar bill dropped to the floor. Traubel 
was surprised, but he reverently placed the money 
back into the envelope and tucked it away again. He 
has shown me several old checks for substantial sums 
that had become devoid of value because of just such 
practises. I have known him to skip meals because of 
lack of ready cash and his reluctance to impose upon 
his credit which was always extended to him by 
tradesmen. 

After all has been said and written about Horace 
Traubel as a writer, as a critic and as a poet, he still 
stands out preeminently as a man, as a friend. 

Eugene V. Debs once commented about Traubel, 
saying : " Horace Traubel has the distinctest person- 
ality of any man of letters now before the American 
people. He can be likened to no other author or 
writer, living or dead, Although a loyal disciple and 



COMRADE AND LOVER 101 

devotee of Walt Whitman, from whom he un- 
doubtedly caught his earliest and deepest inspiration, 
he goes far beyond his revered master. He not only 
brings the old Prophet of Democracy up to date but 
he traverses untrodden fields and explores new realms 
in quest of truth that is to light up the heavens of 
humanity, banish darkness from the face of the earth, 
and set free the countless captive children of men. 

** Horace Traubel has the clear vision of a prophet, 
the analytical mind of a philosopher, the daring 
imagination of a poet, the heroic soul of a martyr, and 
the unpolluted heart of a child. In his fearless search 
for truth and his passionate demand for justice there 
is nothing too sacred for this brilliant iconoclast to 
attack and nothing too humble for him to love. In 
him the most powerful and popular of earth's rulers 
have an implacable foe and the weakest and most de- 
spised an uncompromising friend. 

" The world may starve him to death but it will 
never bribe him into prostitution; it may destroy his 
body but it can never pollute his soul, and long after 
he has left his trail of light up the heights, the name 
of Horace Traubel will shine with all the lustre of a 
star." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE WRITER 

TRAUBEL was not always genial and tolerant. 
Sometimes he was brutal and arrogant. 
Brutal in defending a just cause, and arro- 
gant in his belief of the justice of the cause. The 
Jew in Traubel was emotional and idealistic, while 
the German in him was thorough and practical. 
These racial elements in him were harmoniously 
welded in the American. This grows upon the 
reader more and more as he fallows Optimos 
and Chants Communal, both of which express 
the idealism of all races. Traubel's poems are the 
challenges of centuries of men from the farthest cor- 
ners of the earth creeping out from the crevices, the 
caves, the holes, the horrible streets of civilized cities, 
climbing upward and on towards the sunlight of 
democracy. 

They are poems of economic revolt electrified with 
spiritual idealism that defy the masters of property, 
glorify the creators of useful and beautiful things, and 
banish forever the multifarious superstitions and dog- 
mas that engulf the souls and benumb the minds of 
men. As one reads Traubel he begins to see the social 
world for which Traubel plead; a world of human 
rights above property rights ; a world in which master 
and slave merge in the common need of mutual serv- 
ice; a world in which pauper and prince are welded 
in the man; a world in which love and tolerance are 

102 



THE WRITER 103 

the first requisites of human happiness. Traubel 
sought to be the poet of the crowd, the mob, the 
" fussy, fuming populace of the pavements." He 
pointed the way to culture, led the way to social happi- 
ness, and inspired, rather than taught, that self abne- 
gation was rewarded by richness of the soul. The 
weak and the oppressed found voice in his song. The 
socially disinherited would come into their social in- 
heritance through the logic and strength of his doc- 
trine. 

No writer ever lived who was more careful to keep 
inviolate the integrity of his soul than Traubel. He 
refused time and again to accept literary sinecures and 
positions of power, knowing that to do so might dim 
the light of his intellect and quench the fires of his 
ideals. The following is an extract from a Collect in 
The Conservator, March, 1915, marking the paper's 
age by a quarter of a century : 

" I've never written for victory. That's why I 
could never be conscious of defeat. I've done it all 
because I had to do it. Because something I could not 
defy made its unceasing demands on me. If you ask 
me why I've been a fool I can only say because I had 
to. I was for people. There's where they told me I 
was wrong. I was wild enough to say I could see only 
people. I was a democrat. But my democracy in- 
cluded that which excluded it. My democracy was 
not an affair of a constitution or a creed but an affair 
of conduct. I didn't condone the saving remnants. I 
acquiesced in the mob. But that was what overthrew 
me. You'll never get anywhere: that's what they as- 
serted. I was to stay as I had been obscure. I 
couldn't be forgotten because I was never remembered. 



104 HORACE TRAUBEL 

Do you realize what this shows? I was bankrupt 
My capital was all gone. I was an outcast. Little as 
I was as a man I became big as an offender. I never 
dispute the man who disproves me. I do caution the 
man who endorses me. I was guilty of the final 
idiocy. I stood for people in the midst of property. 
I stood for love in the midst of law. I stood for the 
commune in the midst of profit. I stood for the mean- 
est man in the midst of the noblest books. It never 
occurred to me to put anything ahead of folks. When 
I said everybody nobody was left out. My course was 
so simple, so crude, so thorough, so wholesale, so with- 
out end or beginning or apology that it was laughed at 
as the froth of a contemptible emotion. I've taken 
my place with the crowd. I've met the sayers of de- 
mocracy. But I want to meet the democrat. My heart 
is the general heart. I have no desires that would 
separate me from all the rest. Let me be as common- 
place as the dust. After twenty-five years of life and 
death I still say life is not death and death is inevitably 
life. I'm just a blind, deaf and dumb democrat. I'm 
a democrat in spite of all undeniable logic and in the 
face of every axiom of aristocracy. I want the peo- 
ple on any terms. I'd rather have all the people for 
bad than just a few saints for good. I like the feel 
of the people." 

When Chants Communal appeared in 1904 from 
Small, Maynard & Co., Boston, few persons com- 
prehended the profound meaning and social sig- 
nificance of Traubel's message. The book is full of 
questions and challenges addressed to the economic 
masters, exploiters, lords of money and men. Nearly 
all the pieces which are in prose were first contributed 



THE WIIITER 105 

to the New York Worker, a Socialist weekly out of 
which grew the New York Daily Call. These pieces 
are like a single hymn on equality and comradship. 
The fundamental motive of Chants Communal is the 
same as that of Leaves of Grass. In America the 
book was coolly received. It got but scant notice 
from critics. But in Germany the book met with an 
almost instantaneous response. A noble translation 
by O. E. Lessing appeared in Germany from the house 
of R. Piper & Company, Munich, in 1907. The Feb- 
ruary, 1913, issue of Die Lese, Stuttgart, Germany, 
was a Traubel issue. It contained Lessing's tribute 
and Arthur Holitscher's estimate of Traubel and his 
work, together with three full pages of Lessing's Ger- 
man reprint of Chants Communal. Several of Trau- 
bel's writings in The Conservator have been translated 
into the French by Leon Bazalgette, translator and 
biographer of Walt Whitman. He has many friends 
and followers in England. In Japan, too, he is known 
and has been translated there. Thus it seems, the old 
irony repeats itself. It was Europe who first revealed 
to America her Poe, Emerson, Whistler, Whitman, 
MacDowell and Henry James. And we may fairly 
depend upon Europe to tell us who is Horace Traubel. 
Albert and Charles Boni, New York, brought out a sec- 
ond edition of Chants Communal in paper cover. But 
the fact remains that literary America has not yet 
recognized Traubel. 

When Optlmos appeared in 1910, (published by 
B. W. Huebsch) the American press, with but few 
exceptions, either mocked it or threw it aside as an 
imitation of Leaves of Grass. 

Optimos and Leaves of Grass are identical in this 



106 HORACE TRAUBEL 

respect : they are the bibles of labor. Does not nature 
repeat itself in every recurrent spring? Shall we 
deny the sun today because it shone yesterday? Is 
not a grain of sand on the banks of the Mississippi 
as mysterious as a grain on the banks of the Nile? 
Immitation ! Is not everything we see in man and 
wrought by him a replica and repetition of what was 
before ? Whitman himself said he was not the first or 
the last of his race. In his poem, " Poets To Come," 
Whitman says: 

Poets to come : orators, singers, musicians to come ! 

Not today is to justify me and answer what I am for, 

But you, a new brood, native, athletic, continental, greater 

than before known, 
Arouse! for you must justify me. 
I myself but write one or two indicative words for the 

future, 
I but advance a moment only to wheel and hurry back in 

the darkness. 
I am a man who, sauntering along without fully stopping 

turns a casual look upon you and then averts his face^ 
Leaving it to you to prove and define it, 
Expecting the main things from you. 

The long shadow of Whitman's figure has cast itself 
upon Traubel only in the eyes of his critics. But those 
who have traced the life of Traubel, studied his work, 
and analyzed his methods feel that his genius would 
have manifested itself in spite of, rather than because 
of Whitman's influence. Alfred Kreymborg, in a not- 
able figure article on " Traubel, American," New York 
Morning Telegraph, May 31, 1914, emphasized this 
point when he said : " Beethoven supplemented Bach 
and Mozart. He is none the less Beethoven. Wagner 



THE WRITER 107 

supplemented Gluck and Richard Strauss, Wagner. 
They are none the less Wagner and Strauss." 

Traubel has also supplemented Whitman but he is 
none the less Traubel, who, in his quest for truth and 
justice traversed untrodden fields and explored new- 
realms not ventured by Whitman. Traubel was one of 
Whitman's supreme biographers, but he has gone far 
beyond that biography. He gave us a biography of 
Whitman that is immortal, but he has also given us 
something vastly more valuable — an autobiography of 
himself in Chants Communal and Optimos and through 
his Conservator. 

The fundamental difference between Whitman and 
Traubel lies in the fact that you have to go to Whit- 
man, while Traubel comes to you. Traubel, like Whit- 
man, was an eternal optimist. But their optimism was 
radically different. Whitman believed in and brooded 
over the eventual good. Traubel believed in and was 
happy over the present good. Traubel was a staunch 
advocate of the " do it now " policy. Whitman could 
wait. Traubel was impulsive. Whitman was tolerant 
of any creed that worked for the ultimate good. Trau- 
bel was impatient in his absolute confidence that people 
could be made happy now through the application of 
the principles of Socialism in present day life. Whit- 
man was slow and meditative. Traubel was quick 
and responsive. That fundamental difference in their 
natures is evidenced in their writings. Whitman's 
poems are in long, swinging, sublime sentences and 
one follows his impersonal spirit to the inevitable 
cadence of the last word. Traubel began with an im- 
pulsive phrase. Another, another, short, quick, in- 
cisive. His words pour upon you like a torrent of vital- 



108 HORACE TRAUBEL 

ity, soaking into your skin, flooding your soul with sun- 
light and permeating the deepest recesses of your mind 
with their buoyant, contagious optimism and philosophy. 
Whitman was impersonally indirect. Traubel was per- 
sonally direct. Whitman gave hints and suggestions 
that something was wrong with the world in which the 
many struggle and have so little, while the few idle 
and have so much. Traubel went at his subject with 
hammer and tong, proving his case with irrefragable 
fact. His exhibits were poverty, social ills in the upper 
and lower stratas of society, crime that is legal and 
crime that is illegal, strikes, lockouts, boycotts, tears 
and broken hearts. 

Whitman was a mystic whose ppint of view one 
had to fathom. Traubel was a mystic whose abstrac- 
tions were shadowed by his own logic. Leaves of 
Grass is all-inclusive and is a book of elemental truths. 
But Leaves of Grass does not define. Whitman cut 
the path through an almost impenetrable wilderness of 
thought, breaking down many barriers of superstition 
and dogma. Traubel followed up Whitman's pioneer 
work and constructed a smooth roadbed. 

Whitman was vital and fundamental, but one must 
go on to Traubel. One may read Leaves of Grass and 
revolt against the sundry injustices in the world with- 
out knowing just where to begin in humanizing the 
globe. One cannot read Optimos without realizing 
that the place to begin is in one's self. Optimos con- 
tains the essence of Whitman and the purpose of Trau- 
bel. There are even some who believe that Optimos 
is more complete than Leaves of Grass because it con- 
tains the spiritual force augmented by the economic 
fact. 



THE WRITER 109 

There is not the slightest technical similarity between 
Whitman's prose and that of Traubel. With Whitman 
one may go off into the woods and lie down by the 
side of a cool stream, rest his head upon the protruding 
root of a giant tree and feel the sacred silence of the 
wide forest. As one reads " The Good Grey Poet '* 
he may often be tempted to lay his book aside now and 
then and fall to dreaming as he gazes beyond the veil 
of over-arching boughs into the illimitable sky. 

With Traubel it is different. From start to finish 
the normal serenity of one's mind is jarred and jolted 
by the myriad convolutions of his crisp sentences. He 
starts off with an admonition such as, " Dont be afraid 
to go with the people." Later on he convinces you 
that " the new individualism sets its persons down in 
the thick of the crowd " and that " an autonomy that 
has to hermit itself to maintain its integrity is the worst 
slavery." He declares to you that " the crowd is my 
home " and assures you that nothing so pacifies him 
" as the drive and drift of the mob." He reminds you 
that " it's the man at the bottom to whom you owe the 
most. It's the man at the top to whom you owe the 
least." Out of the printed page you can see Traubel 
shaking his finger at you, exclaiming that the common 
people are the hewers of wood and the drawers of 
water. You hear yourself saying " amen " and you 
wonder why you haven't always thought of the same 
thing. 

You pause to recover your breath, and balance, and 
brace yourself for the next inevitable torrent. — " Civi- 
lization is coincident with injustice. It goes with the 
robbery of the poor and the starvation of children. It 
goes with our luxuries and refinements/^ You are 



no HORACE TRAUBEL 

defeaned by the crash of your cherished superstitions 
and blinded by the flying debris of your conventional 
ideas. You read on and on, affirming, acquiescing 
against your will ; doubting, disapproving in favor of 
what you believe is common sense. Somehow you al- 
ways thought the wall of tradition and respectability 
about you was impregnable, but now you see it crum- 
bling under the weight of social consciousness that 
slowly dawns upon you, with the power and personality 
of Traubel that speaks out from the printed page. He 
does not leave you stranded amid the wreck and ruin 
of your illusions. He takes you by the hand and 
calmly asks, '* My brother, dont you know better ? 
Dont you understand that you've been misled by false 
guides ? Return to the mob." And he hears you dis- 
sent : " I cant live my life in the crowd." But he 
answers : " You cant live your life except in the 
crowd. Going somewhere beyond is like wanting to 
be a tree in a desert. It's like wanting to get near 
God by staying far from people. It's like expecting 
to shine in a sky that has no other luminaries." He 
tells you a simple story about a sunbeam that got 
youthproud and said : " I'll have no more to do with 
the sun. But that only ended the sunbeam. It didn't 
put out the sun." You shake your head and say that's 
only a story. He gives you one more chance to be 
foolish enough to come with the people for love 
against your wisdom to remain with persons for prop- 
erty. Here is his smashing, pouring, ripping torrent of 
logic that engulfs you and breaks down the last bar- 
rier between you and the people: "A grain of sand 
got tired of being a mere atom in a countless mass. A 
drop of water spoke up and said it didn't §ee why it 



THE WRITER 111 

wasn't the ocean. A baby just born thought of itself 
as its own mother. When lungs can go on breathing 
without a man. When feet can go on walking with- 
out legs. When children can come into the world with- 
out parents. When stars can be kept in space with- 
out gravitation. When you can have up without down 
and black without white. When you can have right 
without wrong. When you can have death without 
life. When you can have evolution without God. 
Only then can you have persons without people. Only 
then can you have a peak without a mountain." 

Traubel's technique was slow in developing. Many 
of his earlier poems were written in the style of con- 
ventional rhyme, while his prose of that period — the 
late eighties and early nineties — was formed accord- 
ing to the scholastic standards. It is interesting to 
start with the very first issue of The Conservator and 
read on through the thirty years of Traubel's writings. 
It will be found that one fact stands out pre-eminently, 
and that is that his technique developed in ac- 
cordance with the growth of his ideals. Both are in- 
separable and must be considered as a whole. Traubel 
tried to be simpler than the simplest. He sought to 
present himself absolutely in his common vocabulary. 
He never allowed language to usurp the place of an 
idea. Traubel never had any illusions about writing 
as a profession or about professional writers. In a 
Collect in The Conservator, March, 1914, he exposed 
the shams of his craft and denounced the hypocrisy of 
his fellow craftsmen:— 

** You writers who are trying to write. You artists any- 
where who are trying for art. You who may be suc- 
cessful but have not arrived. You who hold yourselves 



112 HORACE TRAUBEL 

in a class apart and play the game of temperament. 
You fools, liars, ornamenters, hypocrites, prostitutes, 
of words. You who wouldn't sell your bodies but who 
sell your souls. You who have taken to the street for 
profit. You who hunger for flattery and thirst for 
fame. You betrayers of the people. You who put 
words on yourselves as chains. You are goods to the 
highest bidder. All of you, I have something to say 
to you. You may have said it to yourself. But I'm 
going to say it anyhow. Both for your good and mine. 
Something serious. Something that goes to the root, 
ril talk right out. For somehow you who might be 
are not. You to whom a trust is given have betrayed 
it. I believe in the sacredness of the word. I want 
words to be gods, paradises, service. I want words 
to live. I want words to be creators. Some writers 
are so vital they cant say and or the or but without 
thrilling you. There are some writers so dead they 
cant say immortality without a funeral. I want the 
living word. How can I get it? By using words in- 
stead of being used by words. By speaking out of my 
heart instead of out of books. By not trying to write. 
By living. Some authors write as if they never had 
been born. 

'' My words belong where my heart is. 

I am not willing to feel one thing and write another. 
Let me be the servant of my emotions. Down below 
all my words is all my life. Rooted in the soil. Es- 
tablished in the unalterable laws. Dedicated to the 
supreme inferences. If my words dont say that they 
lie about me. I am the fact the words are supposed to 
report. If they dont express me I go unrepresented. 
. . . . . " There are so many writers and there 



THE WRITER 113 

is so little writing. There is so much painting and 
there are so few pictures. We are overclothed. Our 
wardrobe is rich. We. are jeweled. We are placed on 
thrones. But what are we anyhow ? We are huml)ug 
kings. We are fraud citizens. What we are not we 
are. What we are we are not. The same thing which 
makes some men look for social prestige makes an 
author look for literary prestige. We give up the same 
things for it. We lie and duck and play sycophant 
for it. We fool people. We make black white and 
white black. We trifle away serious things. And we 
are serious over trifles. All for what? In order to 
appear what we are not. We are masqueraders. 
Words are the tools of our burglary. Words are the 
cant of our religion. Words are the sophistry of our 
law. Words are the fog we lose our way in. 

" Go look at the books in libraries. 

They are the roster of the dead. Most men bury them- 
selves in books. Only occasionally does a man resur- 
rect himself in a book. He makes his writing the 
parade. It marches with brass bands. Everybody 
knows it's coming. And everybody knows of it after 
it's gone. But nothing can make it live. Active as it 
seems to be it's still a burial. You who have tried so 
hard and have not succeeded may yet learn that he only 
succeeds who dont try at all. When you try — that 
means that you're up against it. When you've got to 
engineer. When you've got to watch your ps and qs. 

" You merchants in words. You 

traders of dreams. You who are always trying for art 
but never try for love. You who always estheticise 
with the elect but refuse to fraternize with the crowd. 
You who go the way the wind blows. You who 



114 HORACE TRAUBEL ♦ 

yield to art the tribute of life instead of exacting for 
life the tribute of art. You who are the climbers. 
You who would give up your souls for a phrase. You 
who would rather write a pretty sentence. You who 
would rather have a style. You who would rather be 
classified with the intellectuals. You whatever you are 
beg, borrow or steal your way into eminence. You 
distorters of scripture. You criminals of words. You 
parricides of gospels. You executioners of discovery. 
You smotherers of freedom. You writers who are 
trying to write." 

The grammarians and scholars are still horrified at 
the manner in which Traubel violated the rules of 
school room and university rhetorics. In his prose he 
frequently used " aint " for " have not," and " dont " 
without the apostrophe for ** do not " and ** does not." 
He used " do not " to be emphatic, and " dont " 
casually. He told of an incident when one of his 
subscribers sent back to him The Conservator in 
which the " errors " in spelling had been " corrected." 
The reader courteously acknowledged that the 
" errors " were probably those of the compositor. 
Traubel said that if he did not find the word he wanted 
he made one. " Optimos " is a Traubel word. In 
explaining its meaning to a curious friend he said: 
"If I can say cosmos meaning the whole, why 
shouldn't I say outimos meaning the cheerful whole?" 

To many persons Traubel is more significant as a 
critic. Some of his friends said they read his paper 
for nothing else but his book reviews. Without being 
inclined toward any such discrimination of his work, 
I realize the prophetic message he expressed in his 
book criticisms. His reviews are anything else but 



THE WRITER 115 

formal pieces about current literature seen so often 
in contemporary publications and the daily press. 
Traubel probed the vitals of a book without necessarily- 
going into details about the author's work. He gave 
the key to the book which opens the door to Traubel. 
In all books Traubel looked first for the human ele- 
ment. He did not tolerate art as usurping the place 
of life. If people did not write out of life rather than 
out of books, Traubel would not waste any time read- 
ing them. He delighted in writing about a book antago- 
nistic to the principles in which he believed. Each of 
his book reviews is an essay on the subject matter of 
the book. Not even in his Collects did he give such a 
variation of thought as is contained in his book re- 
views. Many authors whose names are more or less 
generally known have praised Traubel as a critic. 
Books which Traubel read are marked and passages 
underscored from cover to cover. 

Traubel's book criticisms should be resurrected from 
the files of The Conservator and published. They are 
vital and fundamental and form potential volumes of 
radical literature. Traubel never bent his knee to the 
editors in the clearing houses of literature. 

Several years ago a well known editor of a metro- 
politan daily offered Traubel a lucrative position on his 
staff to write a paragraph or two of editorial com- 
ment at the head of current news items. But the offer, 
entailing a substantial salary, was not even considered. 
Traubel frequently contributed matter to the daily 
press, but these fugitive pieces were always sent with 
his demand that they be printed exactly as he wrote 
them or else returned. This unyielding, uncompromis- 
ing, rigid adherence to his ideals had to a large ex- 



116 HORACE TRAUBEL 

tent resulted in his being ostracized from the formal 
circles of his craft, and also in his writing being almost 
totally ignored by the moulders and purveyors of public 
opinion. Yet, he was in constant association with the 
protagonists of revolt. In answer to this almost self- 
imposed ostracism Traubel exclaimed triumphantly: 
" I build no fires to burn anybody up. I only build 
fires to light the way." 



CHAPTER X. 

POET AND PROPHET 

IT is not as technician that we are now considering 
Traubel, but as poet and prophet of the new order 
of democracy. Nowhere do we find Traubel in a 
minor key. He inevitably strikes the major note. His 
rhymeless verses, which are devoid of the formal lilt, 
although they possess an unmistakable rhythm, must 
needs be considered in the light of their strength of 
spirit. In Chants Communal, Traubel has written the 
proclamation of labor, serving warning upon the un- 
just elements of the world that the spirit of democracy 
has arisen from its tomb and challenges the priests who 
crucified it. He takes from the streets the wrecks in 
human form, remoulds them in the social spirit and 
dedicates their brain and brawn to loving service. He 
takes the huts and hovels of the poor, secreted in the 
sunless niches of our cities and fills them with happi- 
ness and hope in the day when every house and tent 
that shelters a man and a woman shall be a mansion 
of love and a palace of fellowship. 

As we read Chants Communal it seems that Traubel 
had written the manifesto of the coming social democ- 
racy of the world. That book contains the economic 
reasoning of Karl Marx and the spiritual doctrine of 
Jesus Christ. In it, labor makes both an appeal and 
a threat, a warning and a challenge. The book is 
electrified with the inclusive spirit of the man who 

117 



118 HORACE TRAUBEL 

wrote it, and he could be no other than a poet who 
had a vision of a grander day when all the sons of 
men will rejoice in the liberty they have won at so 
precious a price. Chants Communal could have been 
written by no other than a prophet who foretells the 
first coming of the worker. 

Many people knew of Traubel as the intimate friend 
and companion of Walt Whitman. Librarians, 
scholars and literary persons knew him as the biog- 
rapher of " The Good Grey Poet " ; but to many 
radical thinkers and writers he was known as a poet 
and prophet in his own right, who sang of the divinity 
of all men and preached a gospel of love. In the 
midst of perplexities and disappointments and con- 
flicting situations, Traubel sang : 

I have had such joy on the earth, 

So many of the things that seemed to have started wrong 

'have ended right, 
So many of the ecstacies have come out of so many of the 

sorrows of the years, 
So many of the most clouded mornings have so opened the 

way to the most sunny afternoons. 
Evil has everywhere and always so refused to stop with evil 

and has gone on to good, 
Death has everj^where and always so refused to stop with 

death and has gone on to life, 
That I stand happy and satisfied surveying the tangle through 

which I have broken. 

Every morning he asked : 

How are you dear world this morning? 

Clean from my bath of sleep, 

Warm from the bosom of my mother star, 



POET AND PROPHET 119 

Recharged with the energy of my father self, 

Restored from all derelict hours to the lawful service of time, 

I come without gift or doctrine or tethering humor 

To entertain your fateful will. 

When the day had spent its charge and the stars 
and the moon resumed their tireless vigil by the bed- 
side of the sleeping world the poet chanted this ode 
to the spirit of night : 

The world of the night — the shadow, the veil : behind it the 

life-drift. 
Do you ever beckon this far away world through your own 

open door? 
This is not the world of reputations or the world of saints, 
This is not the world of the orderly or the world of the 

formal good: 
This is the world of the homeless and the world of the 

derelicts : 
This is my world — the world where my outcast comrades 

pay penance of pain for my desire. 
This is the big world the little world forgets — the victim 

glory my victor shame unfolds : 
The savior world of corruption, the redemptist world of 

crime : 
This is the world soiled and illicit upon whose cross no 

aureole falls — 
The world of men and women despised dear to me beyond 

the dearest forever. 

The poet of today must be the poet of peoples. The 
laureates who sung of artificial beauty, of aristocra- 
cies, and militarism are gone and forever. The poet 
of today is the poet of the crowd, the poet in whose 
song is heard the echo of the mightiest voice in the 
world — the voice of labor crying for the brotherhood 
and the sisterhood of men and women. The greatest 
poets of the world today are men who have broken 



120 HORACE TRAUBEL 

away from the beaten paths of old techniques and 
points of view. In their songs are heard the fierce 
cries of the driven people. Because of the evolution- 
ary processes through which labor is slowly ascending 
towards democracy, the past generation, especially the 
last decade, has produced many poets who have ex- 
tolled labor's cause. Many of these are called " second- 
Whitmans." *' I would rather be a first Traubel than 
a second Whitman," said Horace when he read of a 
poet so called. 

The day of just, merited appreciation has not yet 
dawned for Traubel, because the star of labor has not 
shone in the world firmament. Traubel will never 
be popular in the drawing rooms and formal literary 
circles. There is a democracy about both him and 
his message which forbids *' the vulgar level " of 
popularity and rears a barrier between him and the 
conventional hero-worshippers. He knew the measure 
of the polite idlers, postponers and dabblers in in- 
tellectual subjects. Traubel will never be wholly pop- 
ular with the worker until the worker measures his 
stature in terms of love and brotherhood, and realizes 
his potential power and grasps the fundamental mean- 
ing of world justice, world truth, world love, and 
alienates itself from dogmas, jealousies and small- 
change reforms and platitudes. Not until labor finds 
out for itself that it is as great, as true and as worthy 
as Traubel held it to be, will labor understand Traubel 
and his, message. Some of the world's keenest thinkers 
and bravest souls have recognized Traubel's real sig- 
nificance. He has received the most extraordinary 
praise from people who are in the fore rank of literature 
and radical thought. But not until the hewer of wood 



POET AND PROPHET 121 

and the drawer of water cease hewing wood and draw- 
ing water for their masters will Traubel really be 
recognized. 

" My democracy has included that which excluded 
it," he wrote some while ago. That sentence, it would 
seem, sums up the basic reason why Traubel is not 
more widely read by the people. Mentioned by 
Maxim Gorky with Walt Whitman, Maurice Maeter- 
linck, Anatole France and H. G. Wells, Traubel has 
a much lesser audience than any of the four men- 
tioned. Traubel did not speak with the common 
tongue of the crowd, yet he planted his flag in the thick 
of the social struggle for justice. He took woman 
from her little sphere within four walls and placed her 
in the parliament of the world. He lifted sex from 
its vaulted tomb of hypocrisy, prudery and pruriency 
and dedicated it to the sacred offices of love. He re- 
leased sex from the conspiracy of silence. This he 
did away back in the years before the writings of Mrs. 
Havelock Ellis, Ellen Key and Charlotte Perkins Gil- 
man had won a sympathetic audience. Away back 
there in the late eighties and the early nineties Traubel 
was writing prophetically of the ideal man and woman. 

Thinkers may roughly be divided into two separate 
and distinct classes : those interested in other persons' 
thoughts, and those interested in their own thoughts. 
Traubel appealed especially to the first class of 
thinkers, and remotely to the second class. One might 
have observed that intellectuals almost instantly took 
an interest in and sympathized with Traubel's mes- 
sage. Stage folk, writers, artists, journalists and 
many professors were among his staunch friends and 
admirers. Traubel's art found in these people an 



122 HORACE TRAUBEL 

unhesitating response. One must cultivate a taste for 
Traubel's dynamic writing. That requires time. The 
generalization of his ideas will require much longer. 
If the American people were to take up Traubel and 
read him sympathetically it would signify a new 
awakening intellectually and socially; it would signify 
individual thought preparing itself for collective action 
for liberty, politically and industrially. 

** My democracy has included that which excluded 
it," said Traubel, fully conscious of the fact that labor 
was not yet ready to admit him as being one of its 
spokesmen. 

The following extract from the poem, " My Plain 
Song Is Not Heard," strikes what is perhaps the 
saddest not in Optimos, and yet it reveals the poet's 
supreme confidence in himself and in his work : 

My plain song is not heard: 

It lifts its simple cadence in love and benediction, 

It travels the usual ways in the usual dress of men — 

Like the river it keeps to its natural course and is not 

remarked, 
And like the clouds it is driven here and there obediently 

to its law — 
But the masters pass it by hearing nothing or resenting what 

they hear, 
And the echoers of the masters pass it by because the masters 

ignore or reject the unaccustomed note, 
And so though it does not stop singing it sings mainly to 

itself 
And is joyful within itself and sufficient and looks for no 

return. 

And yet my song is heard because I hear it with my own 

ears. 
And it is answered because I respond to it in my days and 

nights of love, 



POET AND PROPHET 123 

And it flies far because it is pledged to keep up with my 

ideals, 
And it sings true because it adds my laughter to my tears 

in one total of joy, 
And that is enough because honesty is always enough, 
And that is enough because not being known is always 

enough, 
And so though I sing forever and I alone hear my song 
I am audience enough and I cheer my journey with sweet 

acclaim. 

In his poem, *' When I Am Easy About Love," we 
see our own little sphere merged with the grandeur 
of the universe, and bad no longer usurps the place of 
good, and the veil of hate no longer shades the light 
of love, and the differences between persons disappear 
in the understanding of comrades: 

When I am easy about love I am easy about life and death! 
It makes no difference to me then if the sun does not shine : 
I am not worried because affairs go wrong when love goes 

right : 
I reach out and somehow everything falls into the palm of 

my hand — 
All beauty and goodness fall there, all dreaming and hoping 

fall there: 
Though I own no lands and am without fame yet I am as 

rich as love : 
The old jealousies slip away, the grudges and animosities 

slink out of sight: 
Now all life gathers round me — all the people and all the 

stars, gather: 
For being easy about love and being easy about life is like 

being finally free: 
For then I go to everything and everything comes to me 

and the dissenting spheres are blended. 

The beauty and simplicity of the following little 



124 HORACE TRAUBEL 

verse compares in technique and thought with any of 
his best poetry : 

When we understand each other, all in all, 

When two friends understand each other after they have 

misunderstood, 
When nations understand each other in peace after they have 

. misunderstood each other in war, 
When fathers, mothers, children, friends, people, understand, 

all understand all, 
Oh ! that must be heaven — there is nothing beyond. 

The passionate lover of humanity who was inces- 
santly talking and dreaming of the dear love of com- 
rades bursts forth in eloquent appeal in the following 
stanza : 

I'm just talking all the time about love: 

I try sometimes to talk of other things but I come back to 

love: 
To m.y simple love for men and women, to m}^ love for you, 

to my love for life : 
Not caring at all what may be said of me because of it, 

coming back to love: 
From whatever excursion into other fields, where other 

motives prevail, coming back to love : 
Something in my heart driving me: something in you im- 
pelling me: something: something: 
The casual day not satisfying me : the casual ambitions and 

rewards : 
The being thought a lot of not satisfying me: the fame: 

the noise of popular approval : 
Rather shrinking from that : rather preferring to pass around 

seeing but remaining unseen : 
Putting in my word for love wherever I can: even when it 

seems out of place or unwelcome: 
Just saying love everywhere and everyhow so that all may 

hear: saying love: 



POET AND PROPHET 125 

Lowering my voice in the noise so I may be heard in the 

silences : 
Raising by voice in the silences so I may be heard in the 

noise : 
But saying the same thing wherever : saying the same thing : 

saying love: just love: 
Making people mad : appearing at the wrong time : saying 

love, love, whether they listen or are deaf: 
All I write, do, dream, look for, being love: all I work for 

being love: 
Just love: just love: just love. 

Traubel closes Optimos M^ith the following verse : 

No dream is wasted in the last stretch of the day, 

No soul is lost in the final count of the race: 

The old negations are denied, the guards of life and death 

are dismissed, the long distrusted stream is left to its 

course : 
Gods who disown men are self crucified : no hell is so black 

as the court that condemns men to it. 
Service is self benediction, rule is self restraint. 



CHAPTER XI 

SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 

A WORLD that might be happy and contented 
through cooperation and understanding is divided 
into two hostile camps — the oppressors and the 
oppressed. Both sides are armed to the teeth. The 
oppressors have fortified themselves with the law 
and logic of their class with pulpit and press, and 
with shot and shrapnel to prove the worthiness of 
their cause. The oppressed are equally defiant, but 
their weapon is much less imposing. Justice! On 
that rests their whole strength, and so long as they 
employ it in their own class, keep the line steady 
and think and act in unison they will win, for they 
not only have superior numbers, but they have superior 
intelligence, and superior love, one for another. 

It was in the camp of the oppressed that we found 
Traubel, who, as we have seen, very early in his life 
planted his flag in the thick of the political and indus- 
trial struggle. 

Now we shall study Traubel, the revolutionist, for 
any sketch of his life that fails to emphasize his sig- 
nificance in the labor movement is incomplete. The 
thinker by instinct is the revolutionist in one form or 
another. I accept the view th^t Traubel, the revolu- 
tionist, has created Traubel, the poet. As a young 
man of 25 years, Traubel showed pronounced revolu- 
tionary tendencies. His essays and monographs writ- 

126 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 127 

ten during that period were of a social and economic 
nature, reflecting his idealism of the common work- 
man. His poems written during the same period do 
not contain that profound expression of social religion 
that characterize his poetry of latter days. His early 
poems were mystical, proving that Traubel was adopt- 
ing an economic and social philosophy of life before 
attempting to record the struggle of the working class. 

It is my aim to show that Traubel, with an increas- 
ing number of persons, believed that the only people 
worth thinking about and serving are those of the 
working class, in the broad sense of that term, which 
does not exclude those who, though they may be 
wealthy in the material sense, are none the less rich 
spiritually and dedicate their labor to social ends. 
Traubel said it was foolish, cruel and unjust for the 
worker to view with suspicion those persons of wealth, 
who have by thought and act alienated themselves 
from the ruling class in which they inherited or ac- 
quired their bank account. It is as a man thinks and 
acts that determines his philosophy of life. 

Justice is always a sufficient reason for revolution. 
But there can be neither sound principle nor purpose 
in a revolution not inspired by justice. For the text 
of the revolutionary pronunciamento we can well 
afford to consider in that light Traubel's scripture 
piece in Chants Communal: 

'* Forever first of all is justice. Is love. Not the 
food you eat. Not the clothes you wear. Not the 
luxuries you enjoy. But justice. Everything must 
stand aside for justice. You have a trade, and you 
think your trade comes before justice. You are a 
man of business and you think that business comes 



128 HORACE TRAUBEL 

before justice. Yes, before love. You practice a 
profession. Your profession comes before justice. 
Fatal fallacy. Justice stands first. Justice precedes 
all the witnesses of life. Justice is the only final wit- 
n iss to life. You may satisfy every other claim. But 
nothing is done for life until justice is satisfied. You 
have ordered your life. But you have left no room 
for justice. You have taken all the details into ac- 
count. You have forgotten or foresworn justice. And 
justice is forever first of all. Justice is the only thing 
that takes care of all. Justice speaks the only uni- 
versal tongue. Anything short of justice is parley, 
apology or flight. The human spirit owes itself a su- 
preme debt. The debt of justice. Justice is the com- 
mon providence. Look for justice. When you see 
justice you do not see rulers. You do not see bonds 
bearing interest. You do not see lands paying rent. 
You do not see the storekeeper pocketing profits. You 
see men refusing margins and bounties. You see men 
refusing to subject other men to their talents. Justice 
declares that talent shall not buy and sell. It grants 
talent one privilege. Surrender. Talent does not be- 
long to the individual. It belongs to all. Justice is 
first of all. It starts man with man on the square. 
It keeps the race on loyal terms with itself. It gives 
life general not special sanctions. What is best your 
own is more than best the inheritance of the race. I 
cannot separate my personal gifts from the impersonal 
treasure. From justice. For justice is forever first of 
all. I know what the professional logicians say. Jus- 
tice is not logic. What the preacher says when he 
faces the money in his parish. Justice is not religion. 
What the statesmen say in their cabinets. Justice is 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 129 

not politics. And when the doctor is filling me with 
drugs he says justice is not medicine. And when the 
painter is painting a picture for fame or for money- 
he says that justice is not art. And when the poet has 
dedicated his verses to a person he says that justice 
is not song. And when the lawyer lies in his brief he 
says that justice is not law. And when the tradesman 
hogs his excesses he says that justice is not trade. 
And when the landlord evicts a tenant he says that 
justice is not rent. And even when the workman 
gathers in his wages he says that justice is not hire. 
And so we have reduced life to bargain and sale. All 
are not giving life for life. Each man is giving his 
all for every other man's all. But each man is making 
the sharpest dicker he can for life. Getting the most 
he can get of life for the least he must give of life. 
And this adjustment is the current adjustment of re- 
ligion, of art and of law. That is what the world calls 
righteousness. And when I come along crying for 
justice. Weeping for justice. My heart filled with 
sorrow seeing the lack of justice. Filled with elation 
seeing the inevitability of justice. They are all at my 
heels decrying my logic. The priest is at my heels. 
The statesman is at my heels. The poet is at my 
heels. The artist is at my heels. All the sellers and 
buyers are at my heels. Even the wagemen, the inno- 
cents transgressed, are at my heels. And I barely 
escape with my life. And yet justice is forever first 
of all." 

In the foregoing Traubel has enunciated the funda- 
mental principle of Socialism in contrast with the 
primary purpose of capitalism. He says rent, interest 
and profit, the chief pillars of capitalism must be sub- 



130 HORACE TRAUBEL 

stituted for love, fellowship and service, the para- 
mount principles of Socialism. But any fundamental 
principle of life or government can only be achieved 
through some specific medium of organization. 
Principle without purpose is like bread without salt, 
air without oxygen, tree without root, body without 
breath, class without consciousness. Traubel said 
Socialism must connect in the open with every-day 
life, with the common man, who must define its in- 
trinsic value and fathom its potentiality. Karl Marx, 
the German philosopher and economist, by pointing 
out the inherent weakness of capitalism, indicated the 
economic method through which the workers may 
achieve Socialism, but he did not discover Socialism 
any more than Luther Burbank discovered the seed 
from which he cultivates his wonderful fruit. The 
principle of Socialism is identical with the teaching of 
Christ. It grows with the soul of man and manifests 
itself in his acts and attitude toward life . 

Because of the unyielding and formidable opposition 
of the ruling class which Is strongly entrenched in gov- 
ernmental privilege, is merciless and insatiable, the 
workers have found it necessary to hitch their dream 
of an equitable society in which there shall be neither 
princes nor paupers, to a definite program on the politi- 
cal and industrial fields, and through which they hope 
to accomplish their social emancipation. 

An awakened conscience abroad in the world has 
taken a definite stand before all our Institutions, saying 
to them that labor shall not be a commodity subject to 
barter and sale In the commercial world. It says that 
labor is inevitably the laborer, who is entitled not only 
to the superior respect and consideration of the world. 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 131 

but who also shall receive the full product of his labor 
and be master of his own destiny. Traubel interpreted 
that spirit in its broadest meaning, declaring that any- 
thing less is " parley, apology or flight/' 

" The great fundamental principle of anti-slavery," 
said Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, " is that man 
cannot hold property in man." Traubel would say 
that the fundamental principle of anti-wage slavery is 
that man cannot hold property in another man's job. 
For that is the seed, and the root, and the branch, and 
the fruit of industrial and social agitation that has 
been worrying the world since the feudal lords of land 
gave place ,to the capitalist kings of industry. Today 
the workman is worth only his hire, and although he 
creates the gigantic industries as well as their product, 
he does not even own his job, and is therefore at the 
mercy of some man, or group of men, who, because of 
their wealth acquired through the intricacies of trade 
and the docility of workmen, are the masters of com- 
merce. The average American workman has within 
himself great social powers. He is lord and master 
of himself and his future the moment he gets off his 
knees and surveys his stature, not in terms of length 
or breadth, but through his vision of intelligence. 

The workman today is nominally a free agent, eco- 
nomically and politically. That is to say, he can work 
for whomever he pleases (and take whatever amount 
the employer is pleased to give him) and vote for his 
own candidates. And surely that is freedom. But 
Traubel as a militant Socialist always pointed out that 
where the free workman becomes a slave is in the 
factory, or the mine, or the shop — after he has taken 
his choice of jobs — because he does not own th? tools 



132 HORACE TRAUBEL . 

with which he works, and has no say over the value of 
his hire nor how long it shall last. This is especially 
true in the cases of unskilled and unorganized workers. 
Where the worker becomes a political subject is after 
he has exercised his sovereign rights of franchise and 
voted into power men who later club him into submis- 
sion through the judicial, legislative and executive 
branches of government. The Socialist party meets 
this condition broadly by telling the workman to use 
his political power by voting into office men of his own 
class, who would use their office in freeing the work- 
man from wage bondage on the industrial field. The 
Socialist party, then, is the bridge that spans the 
political and industrial organizations. 

On the industrial field, as on the political field, 
Traubel took a militant stand. He was for the closed 
shop, which he said led to the open world. " The 
world today seems to be against us. The world of the 
future will be on our side," he declared. " Labor 
begins to see that it is only protected when it pro- 
tects itself. Therefore it gets its particles together. It 
ceases to be a thing of items and becomes a total. It 
goes two ways. It goes right and it goes wrong. It 
is beautiful, and it is ugly. That is, it is in a condition 
of struggle. It will emerge clarified. That force 
which on the march is a class will on its arrival be- 
come a people. We glorify the closed shop. Or we 
damn the closed shop. The closed shop is a manifest 
both of affirmation and negation. It signifies lack of 
faith first and then a greater faith to come. It is not a 
virtue. It is a shield. It is not right or wrong. It is 
gravitation. It is a result. Something happened pre- 
ceding it. Then this thing had to happen. There was 
no way out of it. God could not set the tables of its 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 133 

mandate aside. And now that this thing has hap- 
pened something further is to happen. Something 
just as little to be evaded. The stream flows on its 
way. It cannot be diverted. It is going toward the 
greatest light. From darkness to light and from light 
to more light and from more light to illumination. 
There was supply and demand. There was competi- 
tion. There was graft. There was the law of money 
dominating the law of souls. The laborer finding him- 
self hopelessly under fire in the world of fight has shut 
himself in the closed shop. The closed shop is not 
here to stay. Its function is not fixed. It is here to 
pass man on. And after it has passed man on it will 
disintegrate. It will take down its four walls and go 
into voluntary oblivion. Meantime it is intermediately 
vital and preservative. It is against liberty? No. It 
is for liberty. It is a troubled effort of liberty to ob- 
serve the covenant. It is the only resource left to 
liberty to play a safe hand with the cards stacked 
against it. I do not say the closed shop is liberty. 
I say it leads to liberty. If liberty with the closed 
shop is in danger liberty without the closed shop is 
lost. You quote the one man who is trespassed. I 
quote the fifty men whom the one man trespasses. I 
do not say the liberty of the one man should be in- 
vaded, I say the liberty of the fifty men should not 
be forgotten." 

In the foregoing, which is an extract from an article 
on craft unionism published in The Arena, May, 1908, 
Traubel covered the ground of trade unionism on the 
basis of which the American Federation of Labor 
operates. The idea of craft organization Is gradually 
being supplanted by the principle of industrial organi- 



134 HORACE TRAUBEL 

zation. That is, instead of organizing workmen by 
trades organize them by industries. This latter method 
or form meets with the approval of liberals in the 
social and economic movements. Just five years after 
the publication of his article on craft unionism, an 
extract of which has just been quoted, Traubel en- 
dorsed, unqualifiedly, the principle of industrial or- 
ganization. This is what he wrote : " Craft unionism 
was inevitable and has mainly done its work. Indus- 
trial unionism was just as inevitable and is now doing 
its work. The people who think the revolution is going 
to be handed down are mistaken. And the people who 
t;hink it's going to be handed up are mistaken. It's 
going to grow out of the body and soul. It's not fiat. 
It's no set of rules. It's no formula inherited or re- 
vealed. It's the next harvest. It's as bad to say: 
To hell with you; we'll do this for ourselves, as to 
say : To hell with you ; we'll do this for you. The man 
with the right life. He's the man of the hour. He's 
the man who's doing the job. Whether he happens to 
have come up from the social hell to the earth or down 
from the social heaven to the earth doesn't matter. 
The thing we know now is that we're on the earth. 
That we're together. That we've clasped hands. That 
we are sworn to the same result. It's a fool conclu- 
sion — the idea that only one thing is bringing on the 
crisis and the change. No Socialist party, no I. W. W., 
no program of modified or relentless rebellion could 
do it all. The I. W. W. is tilling a field that has never 
been cultivated before. It says things and does things 
with which I disagree. But it says more things to 
which I assent. So I take it for all in all." 

Traubel was constantly evolving from one plane to 
another with the progress of social and economic 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 135 

theory. He kept apace with the enlarging horizon. 
Certainly the romance of our age is in its economics, 
and, as Traubel said, all our heroics are on the indus- 
trial plane. " We have left the humbug theatricals 
behind us. We have stopped sky-rocketing. The 
enormous mills. The vast railroads. The immense 
department stores. They are our seats of learning and 
the arena of our tragedy and comedy. You may go 
to sleep over a play or a novel, but you'll wake up over 
a strike. You'll be unmoved when Romeo makes love 
to Juliet, but you'll warm into a flame listening to some 
firebrand soap-boxer on the street corner. The new 
unionism is the new world. The new unionism is the 
new poetry. Yes, the new art. The new unionism 
which takes in the whole aroused democracy. Which 
doesn't sow its seed in one class, but in all classes. 
The new unionism, penetrating every avenue to com- 
munal energy. Politics, industry, science, religion: 
penetrating all. The new unionism is the new dream. 
The new unionism is the new way of life. It can't be 
named. The I. W. W. dont name it. Syndicalism 
dont name it. Anarchism dont name it. Progressive- 
ism, liberalism, radicalism dont name it. The Social- 
ist party dont name it. Socialism alone names it. 
Socialism. Anti-profit. Pro-man. Socialism, big 
enough to mother father all its warring children. 
That's the new unionism. That's the new earth. Yes, 
the new heaven, too. That alone." 

Traubel was a revolutionary Socialist, to whom 
offices, elections, ballots, strikes and legislation are ele- 
ments of procedure. He held they were not conclu- 
sive, but led toward the conclusion. He regarded them 
merely as the necessary paraphernalia of liberty. 



136 HORACE TRAUBEL 

Traubel's Socialism was not merely an orthodox mani- 
festo. It was not confined by any political orthodoxy 
or connected with any industrial dogma. It was free, 
open-and-above-board life. Traubel contended against 
the Socialist who was strictly political in his agitation, 
for he realized that a great mass of workers in America 
and elsewhere do not possess the ballot and are prop- 
ertyless. For these there is no other recourse to 
emancipation than the use of their industrial power in 
seeking to sever the chains that bind them in industrial 
slavery. On the other hand, there is the migratory 
workman, who being without permanent abode and 
lacking political and governmental sympathies sees 
only fallacy in political action. And Traubel said that 
he, too, was wrong. There is a bridge that must span 
the political and industrial arms of social organization 
if the working class is ever to achieve its emancipation. 
Traubel stood with Debs and many others in the revo- 
lutionary movement in insisting that it is the function 
of the Socialist party to bridge the gap of misunder- 
standing between the political and industrial forces. 
This misunderstanding is not necessarily serious. It 
does not even constitute a breach. But there is a lack 
of co-operation, co-ordination between these two pow- 
erful branches of radical thought and action. Traubel 
was constantly saying that it was a mistake to believe 
there can be pohtical equity without industrial justice, 
since politics are the threads woven into the fabric of 
our national life and one vitally affects the other. 

Traubel did not say the Socialist party is infallible. 
He did not say the industrial wing is infallible. He 
said he knew the job of humanizing the world was too 
big for either alone and too big for both together, and 



SOCIAL REVOLUTIONIST 137 

so he accepted anything he could get from them that's 
to the good and did not worry over their individual 
imperfections. He did not expect the millennium to 
be handed out by anybody, god or devil. He con- 
tended that if the Socialist party failed to do the work 
expected of it on the political field the work would get 
done anyway. And the same of the industrial organ- 
izations. " The Lord is interested in getting the work 
done," he said, " and if one instrument won't work 
another will." That may sound like opportunism. If 
it is opportunistic to accept a quarter without ceasing 
to demand the whole, then Traubel was an opportunist. 
Then the world is an opportunist world. A cup of 
water to a famishing man in the Sahara Desert is a 
godsend, yet his thirst may not be quenched until he 
has had a pitcher full of water. Traubel declared 
" the thing the world is going toward very rapidly is 
human fusion. The working class has got to get to- 
gether. Everywhere. Not on the industrial field 
alone. Nor on the political field alone. In every way 
everywhere." Anything that helped to bring that 
along looked good to Traubel, and anything that tended 
to prevent it looked bad to him. 

He never retreated an inch from his positive stand 
for the complete effacement of the capitalist system, 
which he held responsible for political and industrial 
wrongs that cause so much human suffering in the 
world. Traubel did not hold any brief for the apolo- 
gists who admit there is something wrong with the 
world, but who deny or. evade the source of social evil. 



CHAPTER XII 

INTERNATIONALIST 

THROUGHOUT the five years of the world 
war Horace Traubel remained steadfast to his 
undying faith in man. The two continents have 
not produced a more loyal internationalist than he 
who ranks with the martyred Karl Liebknecht of Ger- 
many, the slain Jean Jaures of France; the banished 
Bertrand Russell of England, and the imprisoned 
Eugene V. Debs, of America. 

In that dreadful August, 1914, the majority of 
Socialists of each belligerent nation suddenly found 
themselves trapped in the vortex of war, and although 
they had pledged themselves to keep the International 
inviolate, to love their fellowmen and to respect their 
mutual class interests, they became nationalists and 
many of them actually fought to kill their comrades. 

In the United States, as the bloody battles on the 
other side progressed and the pendulum of victory 
swung between the Allied Powers and the Germanic 
armies, many of our own Socialists took sides, not 
according to their concepts of international brother- 
hood, but under the hateful influence of racial antipa- 
thies, and national passions and prejudices. 

In a struggle of that magnitude, international in 
character, and world-wide in the scope of its influ- 
ences, we are made to realize individual strength and 
weakness, cosmic courage and impotence. The organ- 

138 



INTERNATIONALIST 139 

ized working classes of the world realized too late the 
feebleness of their resolutions for class solidarity. 
Possessed with the power of effecting a general strike 
in the principal industries of Europe, the workers 
imagined they held in their hands a sword of steel. 
But when they attempted to apply it they discovered 
their weapon was but a reed that bent at the first 
thrust. 

That huge cataclysm, which outraged the imagina- 
tion, served to set out in bold relief the gold from the 
dross, the wheat from the chaff, the internationalists 
from the nationalists, the lovers from the haters. The 
truly great figures in this conflict were pitifully few 
when we consider the millions of persons involved 
in it. 

Traubel's position on the the war was that of a revo- 
lutionary Socialist who viewed the struggle from the 
standpoint of the interests of the working class. His 
whole concern was with the workers of all the 
countries, and his one hope, expressed at the very 
beginning of the conflict, was that the workers would 
fight the war to a revolution. His prophecy has been 
fulfilled thus far in Russia, Germany, Hungary — and 
in a few lesser countries, where political upheavals 
presage social revolution. The universality of Trau- 
bel's stand on the war is proved by letters which he 
received from friends and admirers in at least three 
of the warring nations — England, France and Ger- 
many. His paper. The Conservator, was read in the 
trenches of France by Leon Bazalgette, Whitman's 
translator and biographer, and in London by Bernard 
Shaw whose note of endorsement to Traubel I had the 
pleasure of reading. It has gone past the British 



140 HORACE TRAUBEL 

censors to Germany where those who received it re- 
sponded to its message. It has even gone to Italy and 
Japan, and met with the same responsive sympathy. 

Traubel's war-writings were voluminous, yet, as 
might be expected, they constituted the minority 
report. The war at least afforded the opportunity of 
getting a range on the renowned philosophers and 
authors, many of whom became hopelessly bewildered 
when the supreme test of their accredited wisdom came 
with the hurricane. 

The issues of The Conservator from September, 
1914, one month after the beginning of hostilities, to 
the signing of the armistice, were all "war num- 
bers " inasmuch as the majority of Traubel's poems, 
Collects and book reviews during that period were 
devoted to various angles of the European holocaust. 
Any one having any doubt as to the influence of the 
war upon American literature need only look through 
the files of The Conservator. But Traubel was merely 
emphasizing then what he contended all his life. He 
did not need a great war to prove to him " the mess 
which Capitalism has made of things." He had writ- 
ten in this vein since first he became a Socialist. In 
1910 Traubel wrote an anti-militarism article for the 
Boston Sunday Globe. We find in it material which 
is consistent with his anti-war and pro-peace doctrine 
of four years later. 

Perhaps TraubeFs best writings on the war were 
contributed intermittently during 1915 and 1916 to the 
Altoona (Pa.) Times. In those brief pieces he 
reached his point in short, crisp, incisive sentences that 
total not over three quarters of a newspaper column. 
He wrote some of the most startling, daring articles 



INTERNATIONALIST 141 

for the Times that are to be found anywhere among 
his writings, and certainly among the most fearless 
that appeared in America. 

Traubel defined his position on the war clearly in 
the following paragraphs which appeared in the 
Altoona Times, July 3, 1915: 

. . . " If I believed in war I'd be proud of war 
and say so. As I dont believe in war I'm ashamed 
of war and say so. I not only dont believe in this 
war : I dont believe in any war. . . . I'm not pro- 
any thing except pro-myself. I'm pro-Traubel. And 
being pro-Traubel means being anti many things. For 
instance, I'm anti-patriotic. I'm anti-national. I'm 
anti-country. I'm anti any theory which draws border 
lines between peoples. And I apply that principle 
without qualification. To the Chinaman as well as to 
the American. To the wild men of Borneo as well as 
to the tamed men of Harvard College. To the lowest, 
so-called, as well as to the highest, so-called. 

" In Europe I'm looking these days for popular as 
distinguished from geographical or dynastic results. I 
care nothing for the great empires. I only care for 
the crowd out of which empires have been welded. 
The grandiose empires may dissolve today and I'd not 
shed a tear over their remains. I want to get the earth 
together. I want the average man to know that this 
planet is the fair heritage of average men. Its bounty 
has been alienated. I want its noble equities to be 
placed where they belong. 

" I care nothing for Germany but everything for 
Germans. So do I care nothing for France but every- 
tliing for Frenchmen. And I can bring my statement 
home and say I care nothing for America but every- 
thing for Americans. 

" That's the way I believe in war. ... I dont 
care how soon all the kings are gone; how soon all 



142 HORACE TRAUBEL 

the armies and navies are abolished. You couldn't 
get me mad by knocking the German or any other 
army out. And you couldn't get me mad by sinking 
the English or any other navy in the deepest seas. 
I want everything that comes between people got out 
of the way. Armies and navies come between. There- 
fore I want them out of the way. But they're not the 
only thing I want out of the way. / want all the 
plutocracies out of the way. All the landlords, money 
lords and profit lords the world over out of the way. 
I want all of them without exception out of the way. 
For they constitute the master obstruction. They are 
the perennial threat, they are the inexorable and in- 
evitable elements of human disaster. Till they're re- 
moved nothing can prevent the recurrence of wars. 
When they're out of the way there will be no reason 
for wars. 

" The sort of pacifism that expects to stop war with- 
out incontinently cutting off the root of the evil is as 
useless as the sort of truculency that goes round about 
the earth saying nothing was ever done by man except 
through force." 

The following piece which was written in reference 
to the violation of Belgium's neutrality by Germany, 
and the subsequent ravaging of that country by the 
Teutons, appeared in The Times, July 2, 1915: 

" When the player gets into a great passion over 
Hecuba and sheds tears the amazed Hamlet sort of 
asks : What is he to Hecuba, what is Hecuba to him, 
that he should go on so about it? The world is full 
of neutrality actors today, and we are amazed at their 
tears. Frank Harris calls this lacrymose sentimental- 
ism * snobbery in excelsis ! ' No one can deny that in 
great masses of people the emotion over Belgium is 
sincere and profound. But there are others, and these 
Others are the people on top anywhere who can violate 



INTERNATIONALIST 143 

the neutrality of labor without a pang and yet profess 
to be overcome by the woes of Belgium. What can 
we make of a man like Roosevelt ? He says the most 
violent things about Germany — and yet he confesses 
that when he was President he grabbed the isthmus to 
build the canal. 

"After all that England has stolen what right has 
she to protest against theft? Looking at Russia and 
Finland, looking at England and Persia, looking at 
France and Morocco, looking at Belgium and the 
Congo, looking at Italy and Tripoli — who has the 
right to snarl at German heels ? This is not to excuse 
Germany, but to explain the hypocrites. There's not 
a government in Europe whose ministers wouldn't lie, 
rob and murder to the limit in the interests of what 
it considers its individual destiny. 

" Wilson berates Mexico. Mexico can't help it. If 
Mexico could help it Wilson would shut up. Mc- 
Kinley destroyed the Boers by giving the English 
horses, and he seized the Philippines without asking 
them for leave or us for a warrant. England and 
France worked out their plans in Morocco like a 
couple of cowardly footpads. We talk about the way 
the Germans treated the Belgians. The Germans talk 
about the way we treated the Filipinos and treat the 
Negroes. 

" If a nation is little and can't protect itself we go 
to it with a musket on our shoulder. If it's big and 
can resist us, we go to it with our hat in our hands. 
In England they talk of a plebiscite for Alsace-Lor- 
raine. But if they'd talk in Germany of a plebiscite 
for Ireland, South Africa, Egypt and India, they'd be 
considered preposterous. Yet I say yes. I say let 
people go where they choose. What do you suppose 
Ireland would choose were she given a chance? Get 
rid of cant. Dont pretend that you're in favor of 
autonomy to small peoples when you know you're not 



144 HORACE TRAUBEL 

in favor of autonomy for people. You censure any 
crime in Poland and you condone any crime in Amer- 
ica. To see Germans shooting Belgians breaks your 
heart. But to see your own soldiers shooting the 
laborers in Colorado strikes you as the assertion 
of the necessary supremacy of the law. What you 
have to say of the submarine depends upon whose 
submarine you're talking about. You know it does. 
What you say of aeroplanes and gases depends upon 
whose aircraft and whose gas. You know it does. 
What is a man-of-war? Not only the boat that's 
armed. The boat that bears arms. You know it is. 
What is a fortified city? A city that tries to protect 
itself against assault. If a dirigible crosses a city any 
city tries to protect itself. Therefore, any city is a 
fortified city. You know it is. What is war itself? 
The terror of terrors. To be made as ghastly and 
cruel as the devil brain of man can make it. So's the 
enemy may be forced to squeal. Even if the non- 
combatants are included among the victims of its 
cowardly barbarism. You know it is. Who are the 
innocent non-combatants? Not only the people who 
are not forced to go to war. Also the people who are 
forced to go to war. So that in order to get the 
guilty you've got to kill non-combatants. For they're 
always the people who start the war. You know 
that's so. You can well understand how many of your 
notions will have to be revised if you stop being a 
braying echo and become an accountable man. 

" For a man who's against some war or most wars 
it's hard to stop short of being against all wars. In 
order to be for some war and not for some other war 
he's got to draw impossible distinctions between 
cruelty and kindness, murder and killing, what is 
called barbarous and what is called humane. Who is 
the non-combatant ? Certainly not the people at home 
who are engaged in the work of supplying the army 



INTERNATIONALIST 145 

with arms and food and clothing and everything else 
to keep it going. Certainly not the moneylenders who 
finance the war. Certainly not the taxpayer who puts 
up his percent. Who is the non-combatant ? Is it the 
private American who sells anything in arms and food 
or miscellanies to help keep an army equipped? Is it 
the American government that permits the stuff to be 
shipped ? 

" Then I'm in favor of having everybody murdered ? 
Not at all. I'm in favor of having nobody murdered. 
I'm only trying to show how difficult, how impossible, 
it is, even on the war basis, to show who should be 
murdered. And as we can't determine who's to be 
murdered, it's left to us to decree indiscriminate 
slaughter or to refuse to murder at all. If it's better 
in the individual law, and in the individual life, that 
twenty guilty men should escape than that one inno- 
cent man should be persecuted, so it's better in war 
that twenty guilty prime ministers should go free than 
that the innocent, even if unknown citizen or soldier, 
should be destroyed. 

"If that's an argument for war make the most of it. 
But I still say even in using the war code as the crite- 
rion war is condemned. As it's impossible to fix the 
guilt, so it's impossible to fix the punishment. 

"If war's any right to be war, war's got any right 
to be as horrible as the impulse to kill may be made 
to be. I who hate war always. I who dont believe 
in defensive war, have every right to object to war. 
But you who believe in war conditionally, and you 
who believe in war unconditionally, whether you're a 
half coward or a whole brute, have no ground upon 
which to qualify your code. You lug international law 
into sight. International law is national chaos. 
There's no such thing. There's inter-human law. 
But international law is meaningless. 



146 HORACE TRAUBEL 

"Why should we seriously argue about grading 
murder? I dont want you to look my way. But I 
do want you to look one way. I want to clear up your 
confusions. Almost simultaneously while England 
was objecting to the victimizing of non-combatants on 
the Lusitania English mobs were victimizing non-com- 
batants in English and South African cities. It's all 
wrong, of course. But it's as much wrong for one as 
for the other. As Brandes says, we're now living in 
a sort of moral bankruptcy in which all the ordinary 
principles of right and wrong are outraged. 

" Governments are allowed any crime. Individuals 
are allowed no crime. Governments are working out 
their designs as they please. Some of us, not disguis- 
ing our contempt for all governments as they exist, 
are trying to work out the new designs as human 
fraternity pleases." 

Traubel took the view that wars are no longer 
started by monarchs and presidents, but by antagonistic 
capitalistic groups. No one but a silly sentimentalist 
living in the past believes that the killing of the 
Austrian archduke and his consort by the Servian 
student caused the war. That act precipitated it, but 
did not cause it. The fundamental cause of the recent 
war and of wars that may be in store for the future 
lies solely in the competitive commercial system, or 
Capitalism. It is the inevitable result of the manner in 
which the world conducts its business affairs. Indus- 
trial, rather than political influences dominate the great 
nations and empires of the earth today, and it is patent 
to all students and observers of world affairs that 
industrial oligarchies have superseded, in actual power, 
political governments. 

It is a matter of no particular concern to the work- 
ing class whether their dictator is a monarch or a 



INTERNATIONALIST 147 

president, for behind each is the great industrial 
oligarchy that determines the manner in which the 
ruler shall rule. Monarchs and presidents cannot 
plunge their countries into war without the consent of 
the capitalist classes immediately involved. 

From the viewpoint of the oligarchy war or peace 
is purely a matter of commercial expediency. This has 
been proved beyond peradventure. War is Capitalism 
gone mad. It is the crazy consequence of insane in- 
dustrialism. Remove profit and interest from business 
at home and there would be no incentive for business 
men reaching out for foreign trade. When capitalistic 
groups seek foreign trade, competing with other capi- 
talistic groups for that particular business, the 
scramble for spoils simply implies that the working 
classes are underpaid and therefore cannot afford to 
buy back the goods which they produce and need, and 
which their exploiters and masters seek to dump into 
foreign markets. Of course capitalists would rather 
sell at home than abroad, because it is generally 
cheaper and more convenient, but since they do not 
pay their workers sufficient wages to enable them to 
buy back that which the workers produce the capital- 
ists are obliged to ply their trade on alien soil. 

When the capitalists, let us say, of England, bagged 
their game in South America, or Africa, or China or 
any other fresh outlet for their commerce, and were 
reaping huge profits from their process of exploita- 
tion, the procedure excited the jealousy of, let us say, 
German capitalists who also found their warehouses 
bulging with goods that German workers needed but 
could not buy back because of low wages. German 
capitalists were obli|[e4 tP find foreign markets for 



148 HORACE TRAUBEL . 

their goods. They sent consuls and trade experts and 
salesmen into foreign countries to drum up trade. 
These Teutonic emissaries of commerce found the mar- 
ket already supplied with British goods. The Ger- 
mans started to manufacture their goods a little better 
than the English brand. They put more quality into 
them, and possibly shaded the price a fraction. Gradu- 
ally they succeeded in capturing the market, or a suffi- 
cient corner of it to excite the enmity of England. 
British capitalists put up the money and Great Britain 
started to build the greatest navy the world had ever 
seen for the purpose of " ruling the waves " and re- 
stricting German commerce on the seas. This process 
cramped the German foreign market and German 
warehouses bulged again with unsold product, and 
German workmen were idle because they had pro- 
duced more than they had money to purchase. Ger- 
many proceeded to establish the greatest army the 
world had ever seen. The press and pulpit and all 
auxiliary channels of communication in each nation 
preached hatred of the other people, when, in fact 
there was none among the people. 

Gradually the German and the Briton came to actu- 
ally distrust one another. Either they never knew, or 
they forgot that they both were victimized workingmen 
with nothing but a geographical and an arbitrary line 
separating their common interests. 

German and British capitalists continued to build 
armament and competing in the same trade markets 
until the conditions became intolerable for both groups. 
They were ready for war and the slightest incident 
would provoke them to combat. The Austrian episode 



INTERNATIONALIST 149 

furnished the exctise for war between England and 
Germany. 

It is curiously amusing to recall the manner in which 
the world's press chided the European Socialists for 
failing to stop the war. The American press, espe- 
cially, flung their ill-timed taunts at the Socialists and 
proclaimed the death of the International which, as a 
matter of fact, had existed only in theory. The In- 
ternational was never born in fact and therefore could 
not have died in fact. It is still but a dream harbored 
in the hearts of the world's great humanists and kept 
alive by the fruits of their fellowship. Of course it is 
obvious that the press put their taunting question in an 
attempt to discredit the philosophy of Socialism which 
is for peace under conditions that make war impossible. 
Traubel answered for the Socialists in an article pub* 
lished in the Altoona Times, April 1, 1916, as follows: 

" Christians call Europe the Christian world. Yet 
Christians couldn't stop the war. Socialists never call 
Europe Socialist. Yet they were expected to stop the 
war. Even Christians have dared to call them names 
because they didn't stop the war. This is a tribute to 
Socialism. Christians admit they couldn't with their 
vast majorities stop the war. Yet they seemed to 
think the Socialists with their inconsiderable minorities 
could have stopped the war if they wished to. 

" Even if we had to admit that Socialists failed we 
Wouldn't have to admit that Socialism failed. Every 
Socialist could fail and yet Socialism would remain 
unhurt. As long as vision is less than life its votaries 
may fail. But when vision becomes the whole of life 
its devotees are unshakable. 

" Socialists were not as many as some people 
thought they were. And Socialists were not inter- 
nationally as unified as Socialists themselves supposed. 



150 HORACE TRAUBEL 

But the idea, the ideal, the dream, is still respkndently 
illuminating and prophetic. America established her 
republic in the furtherance of liberty. But liberty has 
not yet been achieved. Is liberty therefore denied ? 

** Socialism is not a journey finished but a place 
we're going towards. We may stumble on the way. 
We may sometimes stray from the direct path. But 
the great objective is always in sight. 

*' European Socialists did the best they could con- 
sidering who they are and what the circumstances 
happened to be. Socialism hasn't gone back. All the 
belligerents in the war have found it necessary to adopt 
some of its procedure. Does that look like going 
back? 

" The significant Socialist development of the war 
is not found in what avowed Sociahsts are doing or 
have failed to do. It's found in what the governments 
have been compelled to do. 

" Instead of the war demonstrating that Socialism 
has failed it has demonstrated that nothing but the 
Socialism in the war has succeeded. Liebknecht is one 
of the most heroic as well as one of the most enlight- 
ened men in the world today. And Liebknecht's a 
Socialist. But much as I claim for Socialism I dont 
contend that this proves Socialism. Socialism as a 
world condition is not proved or disproved by the 
bravery or cowardice, by the brains or lack of brains, 
of Socialists. 

" The fact remains that the Socialists are the most 
formidable body of people in the human society stand- 
ing for peace whether or no. And the world admitted 
this by its expression of disappointment when they 
failed to checkmate the war in 1914. The world ad- 
mitted it. That world which has done everything it 
could to thwart Socialism in peace. That world which 
impudently assumes to rebuke Socialism in war. The 
enemies of Socialism have even gone so far as to taunt 



INTERNATIONALIST 151 

Socialists with being anyway only mortally average 
instead of supermen. Socialists taken all in all dont 
fool themselves with grandiose ideas of their personal 
importance. They know this is no world as it is for 
supermen. But they also know that the world as it 
must become under Socialism will make it possible for 
the supermen to appear. 

" Whatever may have occurred in the war to perplex 
the Socialist, the fact that the fighting governments on 
both sides have found it absolutely necessary to aban- 
don individual for public operations in industry and in 
the husbandry of personality and wealth has shown the 
unquestionable verity of Socialist speculation. Gov- 
ernments may go back after the war. But Socialism 
won't go back." 

Here again we see in Traubel, the optimist and the 
prophet, contemplating the future in the midst of chaos 
that seemed to challenge even the certainties of exist- 
ence. He said the war was to be the suicide of kings 
and the sunrise of the people. Beyond the blood- 
drenched battlefields, over the gory trenches, rising 
higher and higher above the denuded forests, the shell- 
torn prairies, and the cities of desolation where all 
was agony and death, Traubel, the poet of the 
peasantry of the world, discerned in the scarlet sky the 
star of hope. In the midnight of mourning he antici- 
pated the golden day that should bring strength and 
courage and wisdom to the uncounted captives of civi- 
lization. 

Traubel said : "Any brute can be equal to war. But 
it takes a man to be equal to peace.'* When President 
Woodrow Wilson told a Philadelphia audience that the 
best country was that which was " too proud to fight," 
many radical thinkers and pacifists thought they saw 
behind the President's words an unspoken expression 



152 HORACE TRAUBEL 

of pacifism. They were wrong. Traubel said: 
" When the war interests clamored he became one of 
its apologists." Recent history has proved Traubel 
was right. 

As to nationalism versus internationalism Traubel 
said : " Nations are born of the letter of history. But 
the world is born of its spirit. A nation is only a stage 
of growth part of the way up. The world is all the 
way up. Until a nation becomes a world, until all 
nations become worlds, you haven't proved your ca- 
pacity for justice and brotherhood. And until you've 
proved your capacity for justice and brotherhood noth- 
ing else you've proved will dignify and ennoble your 
ambitions. When we can prove that we can love to 
let others live and can live to let others love we've 
proved ourselves to be something more than a na- 
tion." 

Traubel was intensely enthusiastic over the Irish re- 
bellion of Easter Monday, 1916. He called it a beau- 
tiful demonstration of proletarian solidarity. He said : 

" I'm not interested in having more nations. But I 
am interested in having more republics. And in the 
end the little republics will lead to the big republic. 
I do want peoples to be satisfied. To have the sort of 
government they want. Or to have no government at 
all if they dont want any. I want to see the combina- 
tions as vast as possible. But I want them to be free 
combinations. I want people to be together because 
they want to be together, not because armies and 
navies force them to be together. 

" Ireland has always objected to being a part of the 
British empire. It should be allowed to go. When a 
brave and beautiful people want to say goodbye we 



INTERNATIONALIST 153 

should God bless them with the fraternal right hand 
instead of God damning them with paper constitutions 
and invading soldiers. I dont think republics are ulti- 
mate. But they come next. And the republic is a 
passage way to the commune." 

Many American Socialists while consistently op- 
posed to war when the possibility of armed conflict 
with a European Power was exceedingly remote, be- 
came defenders of the nationalistic conception of gov- 
ernment and fell in line with the war spirit. The So- 
cialist Party, however, went on record as being un- 
qualifiedly opposed to war. Through it all Traubel 
never wavered from his first principles. He never 
justified force, even though out of human struggle 
do come some of the fruits of peace. 

In 1916, when the United States was aroused over 
the question of preparedness for the war that came to 
America a year later, Eugene V. Debs wrote the fol- 
lowing about Traubel: 

" The pen of Horace Traubel is one of the most 
vigorous and incisive ever wielded against war and in 
favor of peace and good will among nations and men. 

" Horace Traubel's instinct against war and blood- 
shed is as deeply rooted and all-pervading as is his 
passion for love and service to his fellow-men. 

" The series of brilliant articles recently written by 
Traubel in The Conservator and in other papers and 
periodicals ought to be read by all the millions of mis- 
guided people who are still crying for preparedness, 
and who in spite of all history still cherish the vicious 
delusion that war is the way to peace. 

" Traubel writes in a telling, epigrammatic fashion 
all his own. His short sentences are all charged with 
lightning. To him war is a monstrous and unmiti- 
gated crime without an extenuating circumstance in 



154 HORACE TRAUBEL 

its favor. It is simply murder in its most vicious, 
abhorrent and inexcusable extremity. 

"When Traubel read ?.i editorial in a Canadian 
paper declaring that only when a nation knew how 
to fight did it become a nation, he answered in a 
terrific broadside that blew that editor to atoms. 

** Said he : * If you prove yourself a nation by war, 
you prove yourself a better nation by more war and 
a best nation by entire devotion to war. . . . The 
fact is we long ago proved we can fight. But we 
never yet proved our ability not to fight. To know 
how to fight is still at the best only barbarism. To 
know how not to fight is at the worst still civilization.' 

" Horace Traubel is one of the supreme liberators 
and humanitariaiis of this age. It is a thousand pities 
that so few of the common people he is giving his 
life to actually know him. It is the tragic fate of such 
men to die before they begin to live. Traubel is not 
only the pupil of old Walt Whitman but the master 
democrat of his time and the genius incarnate of 
human love and world-wide brotherhood." 



IXL SEE IT ALL FROM 
SOMEWHERE 



155 



I'LL SEE IT ALL FROM SOMEWHERE 157 



I'LL SEE IT ALL FROM SOMEWHERE 

I'll see it all from somewhere: 

I'm not afraid that I'll be cut off from you or that you'll be 

cut off from me: 
I'm not afraid that the thing I helped do here I'll not still 

help do from somewhere: 
I'm not afraid that what we call death closing my eyes will 

not open my eyes again: 
I dont bother because a curtain is dropped: I'm always one 

side of the curtain: 
And maybe after seeing for the last time I'll begin really to 

see for the first time: 
And who knows but after working in the dark here I may 

not work in the light there : 
For I dont know how God or anything else could make us 

less than brothers after we have once been brothers : 
For when I say brother I dont talk carelessly: I say what 

the sun says when it says light: 
Which makes it easy for me here today in the press of the 

struggle to forecast the years to come: 
So that no matter where I may be I'll always answer the roll- 
call: I'll always answer: Here! 
Dear brother: that makes me feel so good: for I want to 

be with you one place or another always: 
You'll bury me in the ground maybe: but do you think I'll 

stay in the ground? 
Or you'll maybe burn me in a fire: but do you think I'll 

disappear in the smoke out of a chimney? 
There's more to me than that: you'll find me equal to that 

and more: 
If there was no more to me than could be eaten by the 
worms in the earth or consumed by the flames' of a 
furnace : 
If there was no more to me than could be paid for in full 

by the body th?it houses tne: 



158 HORACE TRAUBEL 

If there was no more to me than you shake hands with and 

say how do you do or goodbye to when we meet : 
If there was no more to me than I make into a shoe or write 

into a book: 
If there was no more to me than that then there wouldn't be 

enough of me to be your brother : 
If there was no more to me to last on then there'd never have 

been enough of me to begin with: 
And so I'm happy looking about me seeing you all being next 

you all: 
And so I'm happy touching you with my hands kissing you 

with my lips these days these nights : 
And so I'm happy wrestling with you with the stubborn soil 

coupling our dreams against the drag of time and space : 
And so I'm happy brothering you being brothered sure as 

I am that my hand will reach your hand far or near 

forever : 
And so I'm happy : being glad to be where I am, being will- 
ing to be anywhere I'm put: matched with you against 

all the odds of defeat: 
Sure that you'll feel me from there: sure that I'll feel you 

from here: sure, sure, sure: 
Whatever happens, sure: whatever succeeds or fails, sure: 

whatever comes to you or me, sure: 
I'll see it all from somewhere. 

I'll see it all from somewhere: 

All that I helped come true : I'll see it come true : 

When the crowds assemble in their remade world look for 

me: I'll be there: 
I dont say anybody'U see me: I dont say I'll be there in 

my old person: 
I may be forgotten : but I'll be there to those who listen for 

me : and to those who look for me : I'll be there : 
My name may not be sounded in the hurrahs : but the name 

that you hear will be my name diffused : 
And though some of you may still stubbornly deny me 1*11 

conquer in your unintended applause: 
Though as for that I dont care; I'll make myself at home 

in your assemblages: 



I'LL SEE IT ALL FROM SOMEWHERE 159 

And when the orators speak, -vdien the musicians play, some- 
thing like my voice will haunt you: 

And you'll look restlessly at each other wondering what it is 
that so came to you half veiled, half revealed: 

And you'll feel me at your ears: I'll sting you with un- 
hesitating accusations: I'll be so severe with you: 

And you'll see me before your eyes : I'll stand there gesturing 
towards you with arms wide open: I'll be so kind with 
you: 

And the dear simple friendly little odds and ends of memory 
will overwhelm you: 

And then you'll know I have no more died being dead than 
you have died being alive : not a bit more : 

And then you'll know that I'm one of the crowd today just 
as I always was: one of the crowd: 

Passing in and out : passing over and under : passing to and 
from: just as I always was: one of the crowd: 

Come back to enjoy with you the rich harvest: come back to 
taste with you the fruit of our comrade husbandry : 

Listen: dont you hear me now just as if that time was 
already come? dont you hear me? 

Look: dont you see me now just as if that time was already 
come? dont you see me ? 

I'll see it all from somewhere. 

I'll see it all from somewhere : 

So what does it matter whether I see it from here or from 

there? what does it matter? 
So what does it matter as we put the seed in the ground to- 
gether for the next world? what does it matter? 
So what does it matter as we share the pain and the joy of 

the journey towards the horizon? what does it matter? 
So what does it matter as we lie down together to rest and 

get up together to labor? what does it matter? 
So what does it matter whether it's here or there so it's 

somewhere? what does it matter? 
So that I feel you what does it matter whether it's here or 

there? what does it matter? 
So that I see you what does it matter whether it*s here or 

there? what does it matter? 



160 HORACE TRAUBEL . 

So that we're brothers what does it matter whether we're 
brothers here or there? what does it matter? 

So that someone gets the crop what does it matter who planted 
the seed? what does it matter? 

So that the day appointed comes what does it matter whether 
it's my day or your day? what does it matter? 

I'll see it all from somewhere. 

HORACE TRAUBEL. 

From The Conservator, 

October, 1912. 

THE END. 



Press of Geo. H. Davis, 200 Fifth Ave., New York. 



